


Underbelly

by Cards_Slash



Series: Underbelly [1]
Category: CW Network RPF, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, F/F, M/M, Violence, Werewolves, dark themes, soulbonds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-21
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-20 23:06:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 100,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/892963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared was a geek with a socially-awkward love of wolves. When he got to college he figured he might have a hard time making friends, a little bit of trouble adjusting, maybe get his heart broken. He didn’t count on meeting Mike and being invited back to the ‘pack house’. He really didn’t count on finding out that werewolves were real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Down on the Floor 1

The thing was, Jared discovered wolves when he was about four years old and fell madly and stupidly in love with them the way some boys fell in love with dinosaurs and monster trucks. He spent a great deal of his childhood collecting books, toys, clothes, blankets, pictures and various other memorabilia dealing with wolves. When he got old enough, he started on a mission to watch as many werewolf movies as humanly possible and when the Internet hit it big he scoured it for websites claiming to have knowledge of werewolves and wolves in general.

In fact, for his tenth birthday, his family took him to see wolves at the zoo and he still counted as his _best birthday ever_. He talked about it for so long that his Mother actually grounded him from saying ‘wolf’, ‘zoo’, or ‘cool’ for a week. He found ways to work around that and while he was sure she admired his tenacity and inventiveness he was pretty sure it was also the reason he ended up cleaning out the garage and then the attic until he got caught up in the next craze. 

It wasn’t even like he was a freak that stayed in doors and watched the nature channel every time they had a special on wolves (present day or long extinct) because he wasn’t and he didn’t. (He knew how to work a VCR to record those shows so he could watch them later in the privacy of his own room where he wouldn’t be mocked.) He had friends that didn’t care about wolves at all and he had interests that had nothing to do with the majestic and awesome creatures. Long about high school time, when it became apparent to him that he’d _never get laid_ as long as his interest in wolves and werewolves held fast he learned to hide his long-held fascination. He was cute, inoffensive and otherwise charming so he didn’t have much trouble convincing cute girls into going on dates with him.

There was nothing quite as great as having some girl stick her tongue down your throat while she wriggled in your lap. Except that it just felt kind of wrong to him—the kind of wrong that was all moral and not at all having to do with his dick that was more than happily interested in what it would be like to meet pretty girls face to face (so to speak). 

Jared figured out pretty quick that he was gay. It explained everything—how he felt kind of icky about kissing girls, why he thought the quarterback was kind of like an alpha wolf and had the strange urge to go tackle him to the ground and challenge him for dominance—and after he told his parents, they seemed somewhat relieved about it too.

Jared said: Mom, Dad, I’m gay.

Mom said: Oh thank God.

Dad said: You’re still not getting a dog.

Jared wasn’t sure why they kept telling him he couldn’t have a dog, unless they figured his love of wolves went beyond a healthy appreciation for their power and majesty and veered a little bit more toward the somewhat unthinkable assumption that maybe he wanted to have sex with one. (He didn’t, for the record, want to have sex with a wolf or a dog. Maybe a werewolf in human form but not like an actual animal.)

So that was Jared’s life up to the day he was dropped off at college to face the wide and fearful world of higher education as an eighteen year old gay virgin from Texas who had harbored a dark and only slightly socially awkward secret love for wolves. 

\--

First thing Jared learned about college was that college beds were _entirely_ too small for him. They were narrow and short and not at all meant to be comfortable or even humane. He considered his own bed to be like a torture device that was thought up by cruel-spirited college planners to keep their students just shy of completely sleep deprived because teenagers and twenty year olds in a constant stupor were surely easier to handle. 

Second thing Jared learned at college was that his roommate was a Neanderthal. Like, no kidding, his roommate was the kind of classless, brainless, socially backward, man-slut that gave all teenagers a bad name. He got drunk, he slept around, he never seemed to make it to class or have a single textbook around to do any studying and he belched. Chad belched _a lot_. Jared wasn’t a doctor or anything like that but he was pretty sure that it just wasn’t normal for a human being to belch that many times in a single hour.

\--

Third thing Jared learned at college was beer.

In fact his education in the ways of beer went like this:

Chad had just finished belching after waking himself up by farting and screwed up his eyes and looked offended to find Jared there. “Hey, you, big guy—there’s this party and I need to bring a geek. You want to come?”

Jared was inclined to say no on the principle that he didn’t want to be someone’s pet geek. The party Chad was talking about was probably some fraternity thing where they were going to ridicule him for having a brain and collecting geek things like wolves and Star Trek figures and had seen all of Dr. Who like any self respecting eighteen year old had. It was just that he’d been at college being tortured by a bad mattress and diligently making all his classes and searching for a part-time job for almost a full month. He figured there had to be something decent about being room-mates with Chad and if it came in the form of half-drunk fraternity jerks he was willing to take that. If nothing else, he figured he might be able to score some fresh masturbation material for his troubles.

He found himself at a house that was crawling with all kinds of geeks and jocks and in general people that defied easily defined castes. There was beer absolutely everywhere in paper cups and plastic cups and Styrofoam cups. There was beer pong and that thing with the hose and the chanting people that wanted you to drown in beer and he was pretty sure that the cigarettes everyone seemed to be smoking were actually pot because he got a contact high after ten minutes in a room with poor ventilation.

He was a reasonable guy, he’d had a beer before but he’d never had _beer_ like college beer where it seemed to substitute for your parents, soul and common sense. He snagged himself a tall glass of it and worked his way through the crushing crowd of bodies that all gave him a once over about how tall he was. He found a door that led to a basement that had a pool table.

Now, he was half-stoned from the pot everyone was smoking and not even slightly drunk but he could have sworn that everyone in the basement turned to look at him at the _exact same time_ like they shared a brain or a psychic connection or something. They all scrunched up their noses too, all at once, like they smelled him (or the pot coming in through the open door behind him). Most of them didn’t seem to care beyond the initial stare-and-sniff.

“Close the door,” was the first thing that Jensen ever said to him. 

“Oh right,” Jared said and pushed it shut, “I didn’t know they had a pool table down here.”

The pretty black girl leaning against the pool table with her hands wrapped around the cue smiled at him so her (frankly freakishly) bright white teeth caught in the dangling overhead light and made her look bitchier than she probably was. “That’s because most people are smart enough to stay out of it.”

Jensen was holding the other pool cue and he took a gulp of his beer and then closed his fist around the cup and tossed it toward the trash. He turned his back on Jared like he wasn’t there and went back to playing pool just like that.

The other girl, the one that worked in the campus library, smiled at him from where she was hovering near the bitchy one. “You’re Jared right?” she asked, “I think I’ve seen you around. A freshman?”

“Whatever he is, he’s someone’s _guest_ ,” the body across the couch said. He had a newspaper across his face and a line of empty cups next to his hand. His other arm was over the side of the couch with a cigarette dangling from it and his feet were bare and kind of dirty and his clothes had an oddly temporary look about them. “Smells like a loooooooser,” he said. That was Chris, of course.

Milo was the nice guy that stepped forward and held out his hand. “I’m Milo, ignore Chris, he never learned out to be human.”

Milo’s boyfriend (or something like that, whatever you called the person that walked up behind you and threw an arm around you and all but growled and pissed on your leg to mark his territory) was named Christian and he shook Jared’s hand just so he could squeeze the bones until they felt like they were grating together. “Hello there. You from Texas?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jared said. He wasn’t sure how they figured that out just from looking at him but he was willing to let it slide and not too freaked out. “I’m sorry, I can go if you don’t want me down here I was just—“ He jerked his thumb toward the door in the universal language of ‘I’ll go because you’re all assholes and I don’t like you either’. He would have left too—no questions and no hard feelings—if not for how the door crashed open and a body smacked into him from the side and knocked them both over onto the hard concrete floor. 

“Hi,” the man that was straddling his waist said after the spots in Jared’s vision just started to clear. “I’m Mike.” His grin was just as freakishly white as the bitchy girl (he found out much, much later her name was Zoe) and he was bald which was kind of weird but it worked. Over his shoulder Tom was stepping down off the last step with a strange disturbed look on his face. “You’re Jared right?”

“Mike,” Jensen said from across the room.

Mike slapped both his hands on the floor around Jared’s ears and grinned at him like an insane person. “I like your necklace,” he said, “that’s a wolf paw print isn’t it?”

Jared nodded. “Yeah,” he added.

Tom grabbed Mike by the arm when he showed no inclination toward getting his happy ass off Jared and yanked him back to his feet. After Mike was standing he reached down to hold out a hand and then pulled Jared back to his feet without so much as a fake-grunt to imply he had to put effort into it.

That was how he met Mike.

\--

Mike was the one that invited him back to (what Mike called) the pack house. Chris mumbled something under his breath about calling it a den but Jared couldn’t really swear to what he actually said. Mostly, he could make out the fact that there were sounds coming from all around him and that he was making some of the sounds.

What had started out as a contact high had blossomed up into a real-life high and then he was almost drowning in beer thanks to Mike. He was a tall guy so drowning in beer was like a _feat_ for him, it was like an _accomplishment_ and he was damn proud of himself and he really had to pee. (Mostly the second thing.) He had an arm around Mike who had an arm around his waist and was nodding obligingly to everything he was going on and on about.

“I don’t get drunk,” Jared said, “I really don’t—I mean, look at me, I’m a really big guy and I have to drink a really long time to get drunk. It’s not even that—did you see how much Jensen was drinking? Is he driving? I don’t think he should be driving. I bet he’s driving. College guys do that—My mother told me that college guys were like notorious for drunk driving. I don’t want to drive.” He had a hand clamped across Mike’s wrist because it felt like Mike was carrying him down the street and that was a little disconcerting what with how big he was. “It’s a good thing we’re walking—you know, Mike. Can I call you Mike? I like you. You’re a good guy. We should be friends—you know even though I’m a geek and I go to all my classes and I haven’t had sex yet and I like wolves.”

“You like wolves?” Mike asked, “what kind of wolves?”

“Oh—all kinds of wolves. Timber wolves and gray wolves and red wolves and werewolves and dire wolves and pretty much anything wolf-like. I’m not picky.” He tightened his arm around Mike’s shoulders. “You’re really strong. Do you work out?”

Mike was laughing at him or about what he said or something like that. Jared wasn’t even sure what the fuck he was laughing at but he liked the sound of it. So he laughed with him. When they made it to the pack house it was sometime around one in the morning and the street light wasn’t too damn forgiving or illuminating. The paint looked like it was peeling, the porch was sagging in the middle, one of the stairs was splintered at the edges and Chris was outside on the old swing that looked like it was one rusted metal-loop away from dropping him on his ass.

Chris must have been practicing some kind of smart-ass cool-guy shit for the drama department play or something because he was shirtless in the chilly weather with bare feet propped up on the banister. He was smoking a cigarette that was hanging off his lips while he picked at his fingernails. His nose twitched when Mike hoisted Jared up onto the first step and then he looked over at Jared and (swear to God) the light from the street caught in his eyes and just for a second looked like it reflected in that creepy way that dog eyes reflected. “Aren't you a good boy,” Chris said.

“Suck my dick,” Mike said back. He pulled open the screen door and kicked open the door that opened into a surprisingly clean front hall. There was a bench on one side with a stack of shoes under it and what kind of looked like a pile of jeans and T-shirts thrown on top. (He was drunk so he couldn’t be too sure.) Mike stopped long enough to kick off his old beat-up sneakers and Jared helpfully kicked off his own shoes. They padded on socks through to what must have been a living room or something.

It was a couch against the wall facing the street under the broad window with the dark hanging curtains lapping at the ugly cushions with butterfly kisses. Mike dropped him on it and bent down to grab his legs to throw them up on the end. The rest of the room was empty except for the Big Ass TV standing on the opposite wall and the controllers leading away from the Playstation 2. There was music pounding from another room that seemed to sink down into the living room and made it feel heavy. Like it was the kind of music that you played really loudly when you were having sex and didn’t want your roommates to know and that thought hit him in the gut.

Mike stopped next to the couch and gave him a strange look. 

“Are those dog beds?” Jared asked and pointed at the cushions on the floor, “do you have a dog? My dad wouldn’t let me have a dog.” He was tired and he needed to pee and Mike was holding out a tall glass of water. “Oh thanks, you’re a good guy.”

“Drink this. The bathroom is down this hall past the stairs,” Mike said, “don’t go upstairs, Christian’ll bite your head off.” He seemed to think he was funny or something because he chuckled to himself and then said, “good night” and went on his way.

\--

Jared drank the water, found the bathroom, peed and went back to the living room, found the couch and flopped onto it face first with no care about how his back was going to be _aching_ in the morning. No.

He didn’t make it until morning before the inspiring pain in his spine woke him up and he jerked around until he found a position that alleviated most of it. There was a shuffle and a snort to the side of him so he turned his head and found an _unbelievably large_ dog staring at him. It had a harassed look on its face, all surly and displeased to be roused as it blinked at him.

Now Jared was half-asleep and all but he could have sworn the dog looked just like a wolf. Could have been one of those great big wolf-hybrid animals or something because _damn_ it looked just like…a…blondish colored wolf. “Hey,” he mumbled at the animal, “didn’t know they had a dog.”

The dog’s ears flattened back against its head and for all the world it looked like it couldn’t believe Jared was so completely and utterly _stupid_. He reached out and scratched the dog’s neck, figured its hair would be thick and coarse and not at all the kind of thick and kind of smooth and almost conditioned that it was. In fact, the dog kind of smelled like shampoo so maybe it’d had a bath recently or something. Whatever the case, the dog scooted closer up against the couch and put its head on his chest, snuffled at his T-shirt and his neck and his arm pit while he scratched it’s flattened back ears and the back of his neck. 

“Don’t blame me if you smell something you don’t like,” he mumbled to the dog. He was already half asleep again and the dog sat back away from him and licked his nose and chops and then just looked at him.

\--

Mornings at the pack house were a carefully balanced kind of chaos. Jared woke up half-hung over and unpleasantly stiff to find that the house—while previously quiet—had erupted into noise and movement. Chris was chain smoking (that seemed to be all he did) in the kitchen, wearing boxers and a ruffled apron while he fried pork chops and what looked like sirloin tips. The radio was blaring morning news to compete with the pulsing music from up the stairs (the sex-music). Tom was making a mountain of toast spread with a river of butter and Mike was dropping chipped and cracked plates and bowls on the table and spreading them out around the mis-matched collection of chairs around the scarred table. 

There was a dog-dish (that said FIDO) on a table by the back door that had a stack of keys, wallets and cell phones in it. The backdoor was wide open but the screen was slapped shut. The backyard was still washed in gray-yellow light like the sun hadn’t even made its mind up to crawl up into the sky. There was a heavy line of trees out behind the house and a kiddie pool that looked like it was just filled with fresh water.

“Oh, geek-boy!” Chris shouted over the morning news, “make yourself fucking useful—“ He threw a glass bowl (that Jared barely caught) at him and then reached over to pick up an eighteen pack of eggs and a bag of cheese. He didn’t throw those but it was only because Jared was smart enough to get close so he didn’t. “Don’t overcook them.”

The music stopped abruptly and doors started slamming upstairs, there was a rush of feet on the stairs before Zoe appeared looking all freshly washed and vaguely flushed. Erica was right behind her still wearing her pajamas and looking pink and pleased. (Jared had thoughts, of course, about what they were doing.)

“Who let Chris cook?” Zoe asked.

“Everyone takes their turn,” Mike said from the table, “seriously Jared, eggs man. You’ll make friends if you can make eggs.” He finished throwing the plates around and the girls spread out to get cups and forks and Tom looked up from his toast long enough to see they were all there.

Zoe flicked the radio off when she went past it and showed her teeth to Chris when he snarled a curse word at her.

“Bacon,” Tom said over their noise, “the key to winning over this house is bacon. You should just start keeping some in your pocket.” Mike flattened up against Tom’s back and wounds his arms around him and said something against the back of his shoulder that made him kind of shudder. Then he reached down to grope him through his jeans and nobody in the whole kitchen seemed to notice. 

“Shut the damn door,” Zoe said.

“Good idea,” Erica agreed and kicked the back door shut.

Jared was busy making eggs so he missed exactly when the door opened up again but the sudden explosion of noise when Christian and Milo fell into the room looking like they were rolling in the kiddie pool was obvious enough. Jensen came in behind them, also damp and shirtless and he shoved the two out of his way.

“Food!” Christian shouted, “where’s mine?” He crowded up around Chris and stuck his fingers into the pans and got himself smacked with the spatula. That ended with him shoving Chris that ended with getting shoved back and they were on the floor rolling around like wrestlers (or dogs). Tom picked up the toast and stepped over them. Milo rolled his eyes and opened the fridge to drag out a fucking huge ass container of Gatorade and then a gallon of milk and took both to the table. 

Zoe was smirking at the pile of writhing limbs and the snarling curse words the two of them kept spitting at one another. Erica stepped past Jared to grab the pans of fresh-cooked meat and took them both to the table. “Get the eggs over to the table, new boy,” she said.

Jensen came back in the room completely dressed (he was the only one) and looked like someone’s super-pissed mother as soon as he saw Chris trying to crawl onto Christian’s back with his hand on the back of his neck and the way Christian was snarling and trying to throw him off. 

Mike was already sitting at his seat with his fork and knife in hand and Tom was shaking his head. Erica was dropping all the meat into bowls in the center of the table and Zoe looked over her shoulder at where Jensen was frowning. Then she kicked Chris and Christian and cleared her throat. They looked up and saw Jensen and instantly left the fight to get up off the floor. 

“You didn’t win,” Christian snapped at Chris.

“Whatever pussy boy,” Chris said. He picked his crushed cigarette up off the floor and threw it in the sink before he found another on the counter and went over to fall into his seat at the end of the table. Christian sat next to Milo and Jensen stood by the table until everyone else—including Jared—was sitting before he took his place.

All of them (except Tom, really) attacked their food like it was going to run away from them. Even Zoe who was slight and looked more like a ballerina than a body builder ate more food than Jared could imagine eating. 

“Do you have a dog?” Jared asked Mike while they were eating.

“Uh,” Mike said, “why? Did you see one?” He was chewing up half a pork chop while Tom at his side was shaking his head and drinking a glass of milk like a perfectly normal human being. 

“Yeah it was big and hair and kind of…blonde,” Jared said. He was being quiet about the question because he could have just been dreaming there was a great big wolf-like dog that came up and sniffed him under his arm but he was pretty sure that had been real. From the way everyone stared at him and then rather obviously went back to eating like they heard nothing and knew nothing he felt that the dog had been real and everyone had heard him. 

“Oh yeah,” Mike said, “that dog. Yeah, sometimes we’ve got that dog. Hey these eggs are good—do you usually cook? Can you make meatloaf? What about pot roast?”

“I cook sometimes,” he said. You would have thought that he offered them the key to a city of gold for how all of them looked up and at him and kind of collectively decided to tolerate if not quite like him. “I mean, I haven’t made pot roast before but I can do meatloaf and hamburgers and some other stuff.”

“I like him,” Milo said.

“Maybe you should wait until he actually cooks something,” Christian said. He had a bruise forming on his face from the scuffle on the floor. Milo gave him a look and Christian didn’t bother to look apologetic about it.

Erica smiled and Zoe sucked on her finger to make sure she got the last taste from the pork chops while she contemplated Jared’s worthiness. “You should make dinner, Jared,” Erica said, “you know—sometime.”

“Uh,” Jared said, “I guess.”

“Awesome!” Mike said happily and reached an arm around him.

\--

So, in all of his socially-awkward life, Jared had never had a problem making friends so much as making friends that knew about his slight obsession with wolves. It just wasn’t the sort of thing you went around casually telling anyone. (Oh, by the way, I happen to think that werewolves might be the coolest mythical monster ever, fuck Godzilla and vampires too.) Truthfully, he’d never made friends as quickly as he did with the pack house. It was almost like they were predestined to like him or something.

He made it a week with Chad and the torture-device of a dorm bed, his boring classes and his otherwise monotonous life before Erica smiled at him in the library. “So, stud,” she said (honest to God), “when are you making us dinner? I promise to put a collar on Chris and make him behave himself from now on if you can cook better than him.”

Jared was privately of the opinion that not even a force of God could put a collar on Chris and make him behave himself but he smiled back at Erica. “Uh, well, I wasn’t sure if y’all really wanted me to cook for you.” When he got nervous his accent tended to sneak in at odd moments like a pubescent boy’s voice breaking. 

“Of course we want you to cook for us,” Erica said, “tomorrow night. What time is your last class over? I’ll pick you up and we’ll go to the grocery store and get everything you need.” Her smile was probably the easiest and sweetest smile out of everyone he’d met at the pack house. “Just plan on feeding a small army.”

“Okay,” he said agreeably.

He realized later—like later when he got back to his dorm room to find a sock on the knob and the reverberating sounds of Chad ‘entertaining’ inside that he hadn’t told Erica where to pick him up from and he didn’t know her number or really remember the address of the pack house. He tried the next day to go by the library and tell her where to find him but she wasn’t working.

When he got back to his dorm after his last class that night, a new sock was on his door and Erica was standing in the hallway with Zoe. Both of them had their noses wrinkled up at the noises coming out of the room and Jared was so glad to see them that he completely forgot they shouldn’t have known where to find him.

“What are you cooking us, freshman?” Zoe asked him after they were outside in the crisply cool air. She wasn’t any nicer than she’d been the last time he saw her but she seemed less tense away from the other guys. Erica threaded her fingers through Zoe’s and gave her a look that seemed to convey some kind of ‘chill out’ command. “I mean, Jared,” Zoe said.

“Well, I don’t know—whatever. I guess we’ll find out when we get to the store.”

\--

His dinner, humble though it was, turned out to be a great big meatloaf that was ever so slightly pink in the center and the pack house devoured it like wild animals tearing into a fresh kill. Except Tom and Mike’s friend Misha who sat cross legged on a stool and ignored the way everyone else was wolfing down food like it was going to disappear.

“Oh my _God_ ,” Mike moaned around a mouthful, “oh _God_ , someone marry this man right now.”

Jared took it as a compliment that the answer to his statement seemed to be a chorus of grunts and generally agreeable hums. Except Jensen who was packing away the food like a starving man but didn’t share in the exuberant joy and love of it. Jared didn’t take it personally that the ridiculously hot and seemingly single guy didn’t like his food, or him and almost never looked at or spoke to him. It wasn’t like he could easily find himself having amazing sexual fantasies about the man if not for how he was an incredible asshole.

“Jared,” Christian said when he finished devouring his serving, “we’re good.” Then he looked over at Milo, “we should go for a run. You want to go for a run?”

Milo was all flushed pink on his cheeks and licking his lips. He looked at the clock and then out the back door that was standing open even if it was a bit cool to have it like that. “Yeah—that’d be good.” He looked around the table, “who’s doing dishes?”

“Mike and Tom,” Jensen said. He licked his spoon and closed his eyes for a second which could have just been a blink but seemed more like an indication that he was enjoying his meal. “We should all go for a run.”

Jared didn’t even have time to ask what the hell that meant before the whole table (except Mike, Tom and Misha) stood up pretty much as one big unit and started toward the back door. They were already bare-foot and they filed out one at a time, each of them dropping their cell phone, change, wallets and keys into the dog bowl on the little table. Christian pulled his shirt off and left it on the table as they padded out to the back porch. Milo was the last one out and he pulled the door shut behind him.

“We should watch movies,” Mike said, “you like werewolves right? I rented An American Werewolf in Paris. And like—that one with Jack Nicholson.”

“Wolf,” Jared said, “I mean, I think it is.”

\--

An hour and one bubble fight later, Jared found himself sprawled out across the couch with a blanket pulled half over him while Mike laid out on a cushion that looked like a dog bed with Tom at his side. Tom had a thick text book he was reading from instead of watching the movie and if he noticed or cared that Mike kept sneaking a hand under his shirt to pet him he didn’t say anything. 

Misha, on the other hand, sat on the arm of the couch with his back against the wall. “So Jack gets bitten by a wolf and turns into a werewolf?”

“He gets bitten by a werewolf,” Jared said, “and turns into a werewolf.”

“And kills people,” Misha added, “why does he kill people? Why are werewolves always depicted as violent?” His question had more that air of equality and free love to all than it did any actual debate about the nature of werewolf mythology so Jared wasn’t really going to answer him. 

Tom was shaking his head over his text book and Mike looked over his shoulder at Misha with a grin that would have made a clown uncomfortable. “Because werewolves are terrifying creatures of the night with the instincts of an animal and everyone knows you don’t fuck with an animal.”

“He’s a feral animal,” Misha said.

“He doesn’t understand what’s happening to him,” Jared said, “maybe it’s the actual turning that makes him aggressive—he doesn’t understand his new senses and his new strength and he suddenly has instincts that he hasn’t had to deal with before.” 

“He’s just an animal—if you push a wild animal, it’s going to bite. It’s the laws of nature,” Mike said,

“That’s not entirely true,” Jared sad, “he’s only part animal, he’s also part human. The human half should allow him better control over his instincts. I mean, how can you expect an animal that looks like a human almost every day of the month to survive in society if it can’t blend in? If werewolves did exist, it’d be stupid of them to run around killing people that threatened them. They’d all be in jail or dead.” He shrugged. “Besides that—wolves aren’t nearly as violent as most people think they are.”

Misha waved a hand at Jared to indicate he agreed with him. “You should listen to the man, Mike, he makes a point.”

Mike rolled his eyes, “his point is invalid because he assumes that werewolves want to live in society and that they can only become wolves under the full moon.”

“That’s how the curse works,” Jared said, “haven’t you ever seen a werewolf movie?” 

“He’s got a point,” Tom said, “haven’t you ever seen a werewolf movie?”

“Oh shut up,” Mike said. He pinched Tom’s side under his shirt and then turned his attention back to the movie. They were quiet for a while, just enjoying the movie until the back door swung open and everyone came thudding and stomping back inside. They were all damp and flush and fell into the living room still talking about the run. Zoe and Erica shared a cushion and Christian and Milo shared one. Chris stretched out across his and pulled a bent-over crossword book out from under it, rolled onto his back and started working on the puzzle. Jensen looked at all the cushions and then at Jared on the couch.

“I’m going to bed,” he said.

Everyone in the living room said good-night in unison (except him). 

\--

Jared ended up sleeping over because it was Friday and he could and the couch was more comfortable than his torture-device dorm bed anyway. Misha stacked a couple of cushions up and slept on them on the floor (presumably because he could too).

Jared woke up right before dawn to the sound of nails clicking on the floor and rolled onto his side to find that same blonde dog sitting next to him with that same deeply assessing look on its face. “Hey buddy,” he said. Nothing for nothing but the animal was just a little bit freaking him out with the staring and the stalking thing it was doing. Not that he thought the dog had any kind of above-average intelligence but Sting could have been singing about ‘every move you make, I’ll be watching you’ on the radio and finding the dog staring at him like that wouldn’t have been any more creepy.

The dog inched forward, nails across the floor and put his head on Jared’s chest and sniffed at him under his chin where the sweat from last night had gotten into the wrinkles on his neck. It tickled and he reached up to push his hands against the dog’s chest only to make it growl at him.

Now, Jared’s parents had never gotten him a dog (presumably because they thought he might have impure thoughts about one) but he was smart enough to know when an animal the size of the blonde wolf-dog was at your throat and snarling at you, you showed your belly and stayed really still and hoped for the best. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He kept his fingers curled up in the dog’s thick and (oddly) conditioned hair. For a minute the dog stayed tense and his teeth stayed bare against his neck and then he relaxed and licked Jared’s neck and the underside of his jaw and sniffed at his hair and then licked it too.

“Dog,” that was Chris in the doorway wearing his boxers and pulling a freshly-lit cigarette out of his mouth. The dog turned to look at him. “You act like an animal you get talked to like one—get your ass outside.” He pointed toward the back of the house and the wolf-dog pulled his lips back away from his teeth and let out a snarl that made Chris flinch but he stood his ground. The dog relented and with one last look at him stood up and walked toward the back of the house.

The screen door slapped against the frame and only after Chris shook his head and stuck the cigarette back in his mouth did Jared relax enough to let out a shaking, only a little terrified breath. “Oh my god, what was that?” he asked nobody in particular.

\--

“Sorry about that dog molesting you,” Erica said at breakfast—or while they were making breakfast. She was frying bacon while Tom blurrily went about making eggs and Jared was assigned to mixing up half a dozen boxes of blueberry muffins. “he’s usually so well-behaved.”

Misha was setting the table and otherwise the whole house was completely silent. “Yes,” Misha said, “maybe its just something in Jared that makes him feel threatened.”

Erica frowned at Misha over her shoulder. “Maybe you should feel threatened.” Then she looked at Jared, “no really, he’s a good…dog… That shouldn’t happen again but just—don’t, push him away.”

Right, so should the creepy stalker dog show up again while he was asleep on the couch, he should just pull it closer to him. He’d have to remember that. 

“You are stealing his bed,” Misha added, “and you’re tall. Maybe he doesn’t like that you’re so tall.”

Jared hadn’t ever had a dog so he had no idea if dogs normally got offended by things like height. Whatever it was that made the dog act so weird around him, he was willing to take on faith that it was normally an otherwise well behaved animal. “I didn’t know the couch was its bed,” he mumbled.

Everyone came back from their early morning run and immediately fell into their seats at the table. Chris came back with bruises he hadn’t left with and an angry looking welt along the back of his neck and scratches on his arms and back. He was grinning like a fool though. 

“What happened?” Jared whispered at Mike.

Mike looked up from shoving his mouth full of bacon to look across the table at Chris and then back at him. “He fell down a hill. He’ll be fine.”

“It was just a little hill,” Chris said. He looked down the table toward Jensen’s side and then grinned all the broader and crunched on his bacon as loudly and as obnoxiously as possible.


	2. down on the floor 2

Chad was always annoying but he wasn’t actually offensively annoying except for the belching and farting and the used condoms that were piled up in the trashcan and stuck to the sides of it because Chad was allergic to putting a trash bag into the can. Mostly though, it was stuff that Jared could block out or otherwise ignore.

He was at college to go to school.

He wasn’t at college to get drunk and fuck his way through the freshman class. He definitely wasn’t there to make friends with the Neanderthal that he roomed with. (Although, he had to admit, now and again Chad really was funny.)

“Dude,” Chad said, “are you ever going to get laid? I mean, I have been waiting and waiting and hoping that you’d eventually get around to noticing that there is like primo ass out there for the grabbing and you seem to be blind or something.”

Jared was trying to read a book for his freshman lit class and Chad was talking about sex. (Then again, Jared had been in the shower the other day when Chad wandered into the bathroom and started talking about how he wanted to have sex with twins so no time was the wrong time to talk sex if you were Chad.) “I’m sorry,” Jared said.

“You should be! I’m sorry for you, man. If you don’t get laid by…like Friday, I’m going to find someone for you. What do you like?” Chad was sitting on the edge of his own bed now, staring at him with the kind of focus that Jared would have sworn he wasn’t capable of before he saw it.

“Um,” he said and laid the book still open on his chest, “dick.”

In other situations, when Jared expressed that he was a fan of dick, the reaction was mostly favorable (his parents had been instantly big supporters) but had occasionally involved shrieking and eternal damnation of his soul. He’d never had the reaction where someone stared at him like they had a skipping CD for a brain and couldn’t compute that. He could almost see the progress bar in Chad’s eyes as he tried to comprehend the statement. 

“Ok,” Chad said suddenly, “I can work with that. I know some guys. So, I’m going to go to class—when I get back I expect to see a sock on the door.” He flashed a grin at Jared and headed for the door.

\--

“What’s with the face?” Erica asked him in the library, “that’s not a happy face.” Her nose twitched and her eyes narrowed. “Is it Chad?” 

As far as Jared was concerned, all of his present problems dealt with Chad. In fact, if he could just get rid of Chad and the dorm-bed he would be perfect and he wouldn’t have to keep lying to his mother about how he loved everything about being at college. He just nodded, “I’m trying to hide from him because he thinks that abstinence is a disease or something. He said if I don’t get laid on my own he’s going to ‘take care of it’. I don’t even know what that means.”

“How did you get stuck with such a dickhead?” Erica asked. 

Jared just shrugged. He didn’t actually have a reason to be in the campus library but of all the friends he’d managed to make since he started at the university, Erica was one of the best and probably the least likely to laugh at him when he started whining about how he didn’t want to have sex. “He said he knew some guys and I really don’t want to see Chad’s version of an acceptable gay guy. Why can’t he just leave me alone. I have friends—so what if I don’t want to date?”

Erica nodded and looked over her shoulder at the older lady she worked with. “We should get some lunch. Do you want to get lunch?”

That was just a stupid question, he always wanted to get lunch.

\--

Milo joined them at lunch. He smelled like car grease and waved it off as helping someone change a tire before he set to demolishing half the stack of cheeseburgers Erica had bought for them to share. He also ate a large fry, an apple pie and a seriously overly large milkshake. Milo was about as big around as a stick or a slat in a wooden fence so there was no logical place for all that food to go.

“Erica said you had some problem with your dickhead roommate?” Milo asked. He balled up the wrappers from the cheeseburgers he’d inhaled and stuffed them back into the sack. “Something about how he’s trying to force you to have sex with someone?”

Jared nodded (still working on his second cheeseburger, thank you very much). “He said he knows some guys and he wants me to get laid by the weekend. There’s nothing wrong with not being a whore. Right?” 

Virginity was, more or less, as big a curse as being a werewolf for all that it was universally socially acceptable in pop-culture. He’d met a few people that congratulated him on his commitment to purity but most of those people really made him want to run out and attack the nearest available willing person with his dick. He had this problem when it came to sex and it wasn’t that he didn’t want it—just that he didn’t want it for the sake of wanting it.

Except when he watched porn, then he wanted it because he wanted it and he had a very long standing monogamous relationship with his right hand.

Milo looked at Erica who shrugged at him. “Jared,” Milo said and spread his fingers across the hard-plastic top of the table, “there’s nothing wrong with not being a whore but…have you ever…had sex?”

There went his face going red so he didn’t have to say anything as an answer. The two of them exchanged looks—the looks of two people that had sex regularly with committed loving partners. Erica cleared her throat and looked to the side and Milo sucked in a breath and let it out again just like he’d been lifting something monumentally heavy. 

“What?” Jared demanded, “still a person even if I haven’t fucked someone yet. Why are you giving me those looks?”

“It’s not you,” Erica said. “You’re fine. We’re just trying to figure out what to do with Chad. You know—besides kicking him in the balls.”

Milo smiled and rubbed his fingers across his lips. “We could always just tell Christian, he’d take care of it. Of course that’d end with Chad getting kicked in the balls.” He leaned forward, hand across the table and getting close enough to Jared’s personal space that it felt a little bit like an invasion. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

“Um, that depends on what you’re planning on doing. Are you going to hurt Chad?” Jared asked, “or get me in trouble with Christian?”

“No and you’re safe from Christian,” Milo said. He was one of the more level headed ones of the pack house but when he leaned forward like that, talking low and asking for trust he seemed a little bit like a psychopath. 

“Ok,” Jared said, “I trust you.”

\--

“Wrong!” Mike shouted at him across the Scrabble board. They were playing an ‘all-wolves’ version of the game. Tom was standing by as their personal judge while Chris, Jensen, Zoe and Erica played the Playstation in the living room. From the occasional sharp shouts of fury and vengeance Jared was fairly sure that one of the girls was winning the game but he couldn’t tell which one.

“What?” Jared demanded, “that’s totally a relevant word. It’s a whole theme in the mythology of werewolves that they eat human hearts. Why are you objecting?”

“Because, geek boy, you are the one that argues that werewolves have more humanity in them than mythology gives them credit for and you can’t use that word when you don’t even believe in it. I gave you lunar and moon even though I don’t believe in your stupid werewolves only change at full moon theory.” Mike was fingering his tiles and glaring at them and at the board where Jared had put the letters for ‘heart’. “Tom,” Mike said, “come on—tell him he can’t use that word.”

“He cited four sources,” Tom said. He was working on homework which showed a dedication and quite frankly a terrifying level of concentration in comparison to the outrageous level of noise in the house. (Milo and Christian were having sex as evidenced by the pulsating fuck music coming down the stairs.) “You said if he could cite four sources he could use the word.”

“You fucking werewolf geek,” Mike snarled, “you’re wrong about the human hearts.”

Jared rolled his eyes. “You’re just bitchy because you don’t have a word.”

“I have a word,” Mike said. Then he stared at his tiles for ten minutes, rearranging them again and again and stared at the board before he finally put down ‘fur’ and flopped back against is seat and glared at him. “You know, if you win this it’ll just mean that you’re a bigger freak than me—that’s all.”

Jared grinned, “don’t be jealous, Mikey.”

After Scrabble they got out the liquor and Jared toasted his glorious victory until he was standing on a chair in the kitchen and giving an acceptance speech.

“And,” he added loud enough to rock against the walls and come bouncing back at him. Everyone had come in to join them when the alcohol had come out, “I would like to thank the Internet, without which none of my geekery would be possible. I mean, I would still have Buffy and Harry Potter and all those National Geographics and the Discovery Channel and the History Channel but would I have the ammunition I needed to shame this poor, poor, little man?” He held his hand out toward Mike who was laughing by now, relaxed against Tom.

“Why is heart a word?” Erica asked.

“Werewolves eat human hearts,” Zoe said against her neck with her hand slipping around Erica’s body to press against her chest (which was really just grabbing a tit). “Didn’t you know that?” 

“I like bite,” Chris said.

“Come on, victory boy,” Milo said and pulled at his arm, “time for you to go take a victory nap.” He yanked him down when Jared didn’t move with him and kept him from falling on his face with a hand against his chest until he got steady. “To the couch with you.”

\--

The funny thing was, Jared never saw the dog during the day or really any other time except when he was sleeping. This time it (or he) woke Jared up by licking his face and pushing an impatient nose against his cheek with a huff. “I’ll move,” Jared mumbled to the dog. He was even half way up to sitting when the dog butted its head against him and shoved him back down.

“What?” he whined at it, “what do you want? Do you want to sleep here?”

His answer came in the form of a dog jumping on top of him and the sudden crushing weight of an animal that was really too damn big to mistake itself for a lap dog. For a minute his lungs and chest and stomach and hips were all being crushed and then the dog moved its paws off him and onto the couch around him and dropped down to lay across him with its head cocked to one side and just staring.

“Look,” he said (no sudden moves to make the nice doggy an angry one), “I’m not sure what you’ve heard but just because I like wolves doesn’t mean I _like_ wolves. I’m not sure this is—” 

Then the dog licked his mouth. It was a lot more like ‘shut up’ than ‘let’s fuck’ so he didn’t immediately start screaming for help. Then the dog started sniffing at his throat again and he came to the realization that he was belly up under a dog with his throat exposed. He was far from an expert on this kind of behavior but he was pretty sure he was doing all kinds of subconscious submitting right now. 

“Ok,” he said when the dog started licking his neck, “this looks really bad. No offense to you because I’m pretty sure you’re a great dog…” There was a growl at that word and the nip of teeth at his skin. “Oh, right, you don’t like being called that. What the hell should I call you? Could you stop that? I already have one douchebag trying to make me get laid.”

The dog jerked its head up, paws pushing into the couch as it stood up and stared right down at him. For all the world, Jared swore that the animal _understood_ English. He kept his hands where the dog could see them and left his head tipped so his throat was showing. 

If a little dog-flirting kept him from getting murdered by a dog with an interspecies kink he was willing to venture into the rather shadowy area he now found himself. The dog bared his teeth at him and made a low growl in his throat which should have just been scary as hell and somehow came across as a demand to know who else was attempting to lay hands on Jared.

(Oh, God, what was his life when he had a deranged dog that was kinky and possessive on top of him?)

“My roommate,” Jared said, “Chad. He thinks I should have sex more often or something. What’s so wrong with being a virgin? I mean—really?”

The dog licked his face again and then jumped down off him, pacing back and forth in an agitated clip-clap-tip-tap of nails on the floor before he headed toward the door. He came back a few steps to look at Jared and with a single, sharp bark scared the hell out of him and commanded him to get up and follow. 

Jared thought he was kind of an idiot the whole way to the back door but he followed the giant-ass wolf-dog and they both stood there and looked at the closed and locked door. “You want out?”

Another bark indicated that was exactly what the dog wanted. So he pulled open the door and the dog pushed out through the screen and hopped down the back steps and then started running.

“Oh, that’s so bad,” Jared mumbled, “that’s just really bad.”

\--

The next morning, Jensen was even more unmanageably surly than he normally was. He came down the stairs, grabbed the whole pot of coffee, a cup and then went back up the stairs without a word. Everyone else stayed quiet until they heard his door close and then looked around at one another and shrugged it off.

“Yeah,” Christian was assuring him, “that dog is smart enough to come back on its own. We don’t worry about him.”

“Does he have a name?” Jared asked. Just if he was going to be attacked by the animal on a semi-regular basis, he wanted to know what the hell he should be calling it.

They all looked around at one another long enough to indicate the dog didn’t have a name before Zoe said, “Ross,” in exactly the way you said something you just made up. “Not that he cares what you call him.”

“I wouldn’t call him dog,” Milo said, “I don’t think he likes that.”

Mike snorted into his milk and then coughed when he set the cup down. “Sorry—sorry. Wrong pipe.”

\--

Chad was not there when Jared got back to his dorm room. In fact, he wasn’t there for most of the week so when he finally made it back like on Thursday, he put his hands up and looked sheepish. “Look man,” he said, “I didn’t know that you had like mean gay friends that didn’t like you being harassed. I didn’t mean anything by it and I swear I won’t try to whore you out to my lonely friends.”

Jared had _no idea_ what Chad was talking about. 

“Also—don’t go out after dark. I got chased by this big ass dog the other night. I swear to God I thought it was going to kill me. Do dogs do that? I mean—have you ever heard of one eating a person?”

“No,” Jared said, “dogs don’t usually do that.” (At least normal, not English-speaking dogs didn’t go off and chase down people like Chad for no real reason at all. Some great-big wolf-like blonde dogs might just do that. Just not normal ones.)

“Whatever, just be careful. That thing chased me for like a mile.” He was searching around through his stuff, “I thought he was going to rip my balls off or something.”

\--

Christian played music (as it turned out) in a small bar that catered to all the campus kids. The bar probably knew that a goodly portion of their customers weren’t quite as legal as their ID’s would lead one to believe but they were cool about not pointing it out. Jared, as it turned out, was the only actually not-legal one in the whole group and that made him feel a little bit like the odd man out. 

Mike made sure he got beer anyway, but still, they were all older than him. He had probably known that before but didn’t really realize it until he was sitting around a table playing a game of I Never with them while they waited for Christian to get his band together.

His list of I Never was very nearly endless.

Their list of I Never was actually pretty damn small. When it came around to his turn (after a whole smattering of ‘had sex in public places’ type prompts, one ‘ran away from home’ and one ‘peed on someone/someone’s clothes’) he was completely sober and a little resentful that he actually hadn’t done any of the things they all seemed to have done (more than once). He was working on thinking of something so outrageous they couldn’t possibly have done anything of the sort just so he could have the satisfaction of taking another drink.

“Just saying something,” Chris said. He wanted to smoke and he wasn’t allowed to inside the bar anymore.

“I never smoked,” Jared mumbled.

Chris took a drink gratefully and Mike took a little drink and shrugged it off. “I don’t smoke now,” he pointed out. By the time Christian came on, the whole table was a little pink in the cheeks (except Jensen who abstained from playing a ‘childish, stupid game’). Jared watched the crowd of people tighten around the little stage before the music even started.

“Show off,” Erica sing-songed.

“He’s going to start a riot,” Zoe said.

“What’s that smell?” Jared asked. It was a deep kind of smell, almost like you wouldn’t smell it if you weren’t looking for it except for how he could smell it. He couldn’t be sure but he was almost sure that the smell was the reason he was suddenly all hot and itchy and quickly veering straight for unbearably horny. It wasn’t the good kind of feeling that was slow building and seductive but the same icky-wrong feeling he got when cute girls wriggled on his lap and stuck their tongues down his throat.

He could fuck—he could have fucked them—but it felt _wrong_ and twisted. His neck felt hot and Chris was turning his head to look at him with a sneer-smirk cut across his face. “What?” Jared demanded.

“Move,” Chris said, “so I can go smoke.”

“You don’t look so good,” Erica said kindly, “maybe you should go outside and get some air.”

That was a good idea so he got himself up and headed for the exit. Chris was right behind him, pulling his cigarettes out of his pocket and pushing one into his mouth before they even made it out of the door. The night was bright and the stars were winking through the streetlights. The moon was damn-near full and bright enough that it caught on the roofs of the gleaming cars. 

“Look,” Chris said after he looked up from lighting his cigarette, “you need to go back to your dorm tonight. Don’t come to the house.” His eyes were dim and catching the light just like dog-eyes. It was just a trick of the moon catching on the rims of his too-blue eyes but… “I’m not asking and I’m not sugar-coating this. If you try to come back to our house tonight I’ll beat your ass and throw you in my trunk.”

“What?” Jared asked.

“In fact, I don’t want to see you for a week. You’re a good kid but I’m sick of you. Nothing personal.” He flicked ash at the ground and then shrugged. “I’m obviously outvoted—pretty sure they all want to suck your dick—except the lesbians. They just want to braid your hair. So do me a favor and give a vacation before I kill myself from being tired of looking at you.”

Jared shrugged. “Whatever.” He looked out toward the street and then back at Chris who was already walking away like he didn’t care what Jared did with his cheerful threat. He was all muscle under his clothes and there was no way Jared stood a chance against him if Chris decided to go psychopath on him anyway. “Whatever,” he repeated.

\--

“Mating,” Mike said two weeks later after he had all but dragged Jared back to the pack house against his will. They were laying around on the cushions on the floor with a documentary on the history of werewolves playing as background noise. Erica was at least humoring them by sticking around after everyone groaned as soon as they saw the opening credits. 

“For life,” Jared said, “unless the original mate dies—or sometimes depending on the population. But, for life, man.”

“Is that wolves or werewolves?” Mike asked, “don’t you think it’s a little naïve to think that werewolves—who are, as you keep saying, at least half human, are really going to honor some centuries old bullshit about mating with one person for their whole lives? That’s…a little stupid, Jared.” He had a bowl of pretzels to one side and a bowl of nacho cheese to the other and drips on his shirt from where he kept missing his mouth.

“Werewolves might be a least half human but they’re still mystical creatures,” Jared said, “you’re talking about a creature that by all logical shouldn’t even exist. They turn into wolves under the full moon, Mike. So what if they are predestined to mate to one person for their whole lives. It’s like—fate. They have to find their mate and once they do they have to have them.”

“What if the mate doesn’t want them?” Mike asked, “that’s a stupid system—what if they want to love someone else? Werewolves are mystical so they all have to subscribe to the same antiquated theory that they have a soul mate somewhere?” He licked the cheese off the corner of his lips. “Do you believe this crap, Erica?”

Erica shrugged, “Mike—I found my soul mate.”

“Bullshiiiiiiiiiiit,” Mike sang at her, “I call bullshit. I call a big, stinking, messy pile of bullshit. You’re telling me the same creature that’s supposedly as intelligent as a feral animal come full-moon night is capable of the kind of lasting bond that is _theoretically_ needed to make a soul mate? This is someone that goes around and rips out human hearts, dude. I’m not sure I want to believe they even know what love is.”

“You’re an idiot!” Jared shouted at him, “you are an _idiot_. You just mixed like three theories and you don’t even believe in them. So what if werewolves can rip out hearts, so what if they turn into animals under the full moon? Animals are capable of forming lasting bonds—wild animals are capable of forming lasting bonds. For that matter, what does it matter? I want to believe that werewolves—if they existed—find a mate and stay with that mate for their entire life. It’s better than fucking humans that can’t even stay married for two years, man. You have to admit that.”

Mike rolled his eyes, “you just want to romanticize a monster.”

Jared tried really hard not to but he couldn’t help it. When words failed him he had to fight in other ways and he found himself tackling Mike to the ground and grabbing the cheese sauce to smear across his face. They were rolling across the floor, spilling pretzels and leaving huge splotches of cheese across the wood that got soaked into his clothes and shouting. Mike kept smacking at him and Jared wrapped his arms and legs around him like an octopus until he had him pinned and immobilized. “Repeat after me,” he said.

“Go to hell!” Mike shouted.

“Repeat after me,” Jared said, “werewolves mate for life.”

“I’ll never give you super geek, I’ll never give!” Mike was laughing almost too hard to get the words out and still jerking and flailing against the grip that Jared had on him. “Get off me!” After another few useless flops he went limp and pushed his cheese-covered face into the cushion. “Werewolves mate for life.”

“Good job,” Jared said and shoved off him. He stood up and dusted the pretzels off himself and was grinning at his victory when he noticed the rest of the house was standing there with half-dumbfounded looks on their faces. “Sorry,” he said, “theological debate.”

It was Christian that burst into laughter first, one hand pointed at Mike and the other arm clutching his ribs. The other followed shortly after, all falling over from laughing and Mike cursed at them and threw the broken pieces of the pretzels at them before he charged and the simple little fight turned into a pack house brawl. 

Jared jumped in on the fun and tackled with the best of them before he noticed that Jensen wasn’t there.

\--

That night, he slept in his boxers with a blanket that Erica brought him from upstairs (where he’d never been, actually) because his clothes were in the washer covered in cheese and drips of blood from the brawl and some one’s bloodied nose. He was snuggled up and comfy and snoozing happily when the cold nose snuck up his blanket and ran down his back. 

“Ross,” he whined at the dog.

Ross (if that was his name) was so shocked by that he jerked back and Jared thought maybe he’d gotten rid of the dog for good. Then it came back and got teeth on the blanket and yanked at it. Jared wasn’t suicidal but he was warm so he dug his fingers into the blanket and held on. Ross was stumped for only a second before it yanked _harder_ and Jared’s grip on the blanket was the reason he landed on his ass on the floor with the dog looking down at him. 

“Look,” Jared said, “I don’t know if you know this or not but you’re a…” Ross didn’t like the word dog. “Animal. I’m a _human_. Isn’t there some pretty Springer Spaniel you’d rather be cozying up to?” (He was trying to reason with an animal. This was his life.)

Ross reached back down and got a mouthful of blanket and tugged it over to the cushions that had been all shoved together so they made something like a big bed on the ground. He looked back at Jared laying virtually naked on the hard floor and dropped the blanket and barked at him. When that didn’t get immediate obedience, Ross came back over and nosed at his throat, licked at his pulse and then showed his teeth with a growl that got his point across _crystal clear_. 

“Oh my God,” Jared said as he followed the dog over to the cushions, “I’m going to have to call my mother and tell her I’m in an abusive relationship with a dog.” He collapsed on the cushions and Ross dragged the blanket to him, nosed at his hand until he covered up again. “You’re very strange,” he told the dog. Ross decided to answer that by lying down next to him, acting uncertain by how it was supposed to work and then curling up by his chest and huffing. “Ok, I can deal with this,” Jared said.

At some point he was really going to have to re-examine his choices and why he kept coming back and sleeping on the couch when he knew this shit was going to happen. For now, he just ran his hand down the dog’s back and felt the bristle of his pretty-soft fur and then found a comfortable way to lay that wasn’t quite spooning a giant dog. 

“Good night, Ross,” Jared said, “please don’t hump me while I’m asleep—or you know, awake.”

Ross huffed at him again, turned his head and licked at Jared’s hand before he went still again.


	3. On the Floor 3

Right before Christmas, like the day before the day before he was supposed to get on a plane and go back to see his folks, Mike called him on his cell phone (Jared wasn’t even aware that Mike knew how to work one) and asked him over.

“Come on man,” Mike said, “you have to come hang out before you leave us for a week.” 

Jared was pretty sure that if anyone else (except Erica) had asked him, he could have said no. But it was Mike and he was that kind of inoffensive and eager that a puppy was so he sighed into the phone. “Is Ross going to be there?” 

Mike was quiet for a long time. The longer the silence dragged on, the less comfortable Jared felt with it and the more he was sure that whatever Mike was going to say was going to be a lie or some placating truth. “Uh, yeah. But maybe if you brought him something he’d just leave you alone or something.” Then he went on with: “come on, Jared! A week, man. Just come over and you can make dinner for everyone and we’ll all watch some stupid Christmas movie or something.”

“Like Balto,” Jared said. (It had a half-wolf in it.) 

“Ok,” Mike said, “so you’ll come?”

That was exactly how he ended up over at the pack house making steaks to order. Everyone seemed oddly aggressive, Christian kept picking at Milo who was attempting to make some mixed-vegetable thing to go with the steak. He was doing a great job of ignoring Christian pinching at him and poking at him and in general taunting him until Christian came up and flicked his ear.

Milo—who had never, in all of Jared’s memory shown any kind of insane aggression like the rest—threw the spatula at the stove, turned and jumped on Christian with a shout that could have been a growl. Christian’s laugh turned into a yelp as he was tackled down to the ground and they were rolling on the floor throwing elbows and knees.

Zoe’s aggression was quieter, like an animal with its hackles raised that was perfectly fine to stay in their corner and wouldn’t bite unless approached. Erica stayed with her, easily leaning back into Zoe’s body and letting herself be petted and protected from the unknown threat.

“Get out of the kitchen!” Jared shouted at Christian and Milo, “get out!”

Mike and Tom were upstairs with the sex music pounding so Jared was pretty sure they were working out their excess energy that way. Which left Chris who had been out on the porch chain smoking and sipping straight out of a tall bottle of something brown—out of all of them, Chris was the most mellow (which was just about a sign of the apocalypse).

Jensen hadn’t shown his face yet but his order for a steak so rare it damn near mooed had been conveyed through Zoe.

“Get out,” Chris said when he came back in after Jared yelled. He reached down and grabbed Christian by the elbow and dragged him through the doorway from the kitchen to the hall and cursed at the way Milo just followed right after Christian without even putting the fight on pause. “Animals,” he muttered when he came in to the kitchen again. He threw his book in the sink and looked over at Zoe by the table and then back at him. 

“It’s almost ready,” Jared said.

Chris made him uneasy and that could have been the fact that he once threatened to beat the hell out of Jared or it could be the fact that he was never completely dressed or just the fact that out of all of them, he seemed the…least human. It was an odd way to think but Chris made him think of a wild animal in captivity, pacing at the bars and making plans to slaughter its captors. “Better be bloody,” Chris said. He picked up the spatula that Milo had thrown and finished the vegetables that had been abandoned. 

There were potatoes in the oven and dinner rolls with butter that were already in a pile on the table. He piled the steaks up on a plate and carried them over to the table. Jared didn’t even have time to announce that the food was ready before everyone was running for their seat. Even Mike and Tom showed up in wrinkled clothes with hickies and still-fading marks.

“Where’s Jensen?” Jared asked. 

“Not coming, probably,” Mike said. “You should just give his steak to Ross.”

After they inhaled their food everyone found their cushion in the living room and groaned collectively about having to watch Balto. (It was a perfectly decent movie, damn it.)

\--

Jared woke up to the DVD menu playing on repeat forever. Everyone had abandoned him sometime after he fell asleep during the movie but he had a blanket thrown across him that hadn’t been there when he started yawning earlier. For a minute (a long minute) he kept his eyes closed and tried to reassure himself that when he opened them there wasn’t going to be a wolf-sized blonde dog staring at him from next to the couch. The whole time he was quietly reassuring himself that it wasn’t going to happen he was working out why the hell he’d let himself be talked into coming around again when he knew it was inevitable.

Then he was questioning how he could feel so safe in a house that let a wolf-sized blonde dog wander around and randomly decide that human guests were its new mate. For that matter, he didn’t feel safe around Chris because he had that niggling feeling of dread in the base of his stomach that the man was going to hurt him. Not even physically, necessarily, just that he was going to do something to destroy the bubble that surrounded the pack house.

Really, what with all the sex music and all the wrestling and the territorial aggression that went on in the house, he had no idea how he could even begin to feel safe. He did, though, and he always wanted to come back.

So he opened his eyes at last and found Ross sitting right there next to the couch waiting for him. The dog bent forward and licked his neck, nosed around to catch the smell it always went looking for and then licked him again and put his paws up on the side of the couch like it was going to climb on top of him. 

“Hey,” Jared said, “wait; I have a steak for you.” He rolled up onto his side and got his feet on the floor and waited on the edge of the couch for the dog to veto his sudden decision to move their clandestine love affair away from the couch. Instead of barking or grabbing him by the throat the dog just stood up and looked at him expectantly. “So, you’re saying the way to your heart is through your stomach?”

Ross regarded him as an idiot with his ears flattened back against his head.

Jared didn’t blame him, really. He pushed himself up and headed into the kitchen. The last steak was on a plate on the counter wrapped in tin foil (he’d left it in case Jensen decided to show up and eat it after all) and he peeled the foil back and set the plate on the floor for the dog. “Merry Christmas,” he said, “just don’t go off thinking this is me agreeing to go steady or anything. You still freak me out.”

Ross didn’t care what he was saying, he was busy chewing down the steak and the vegetables and nosing the potato off his plate with a snarl of distaste. After he’d licked up all of the streaks of blood on the plate leftover from the super rare steak he looked up with his broad tongue across his muzzle and licked his fingers. 

“Yeah well, I’m glad you liked it. Maybe you can tell Jensen it’s worth showing up at the dinner table for, huh?” He scratched behind the dog’s ears and got his wrist licked for his efforts. 

\--

Christmas time sent him right back to his parent’s warm home and the ever-present smell of cookies. His mother was a busybody that had the whole house decked out in pretty decorations and Jared enjoyed the down time by flopping on the couch and vowing not to move except it involved gifts, food or his bed. His father seemed to be aware of this plan and maybe even supported it. It was his Mom that didn’t realize he had a plan for his time off and it involved doing nothing.

“Oh Jared,” she said after she bullied him into the kitchen and had him mixing things, “tell me about college—I want to see your face while you’re talking. You’re so…quiet lately. Have you made friends?”

“Yes Mama,” he said, “I told you about Mike and Tom, Erica and Zoe, Christian and Milo and Chris. My roommate is even okay ever since he got chased by that dog.” (And threatened by Milo.) “I have a lot of friends.”

Then his Mother fixed him with the mother-stare. “Do you have a boyfriend Jared?”

Yeah, sure, he’s got four legs, blonde hair, kind of greenish eyes and seriously needs to learn that humans and dogs are not meant to mix. He’s kind of pushy and a little domineering—nothing at all you’d want for your precious baby son. “Nope,” he said.

His Mother’s smile deflated just a little bit. “Nobody?”

So, he’d never had a boyfriend and apparently his lack of a sex life was troubling to his parents. He didn’t blame them when he found himself in the world’s most dysfunctional relationship with a giant wolf-dog that liked to spoon him on a dog bed and got all snarly and bared his teeth when Jared tried to move without asking permission first. (Come to think of it, maybe his father had been right about the dog thing. He might have been on the edge of bestiality years before now if he’d gotten a dog as a child.) “Well, there’s—a lot of cute guys?” he said helpfully.

“Oh?” his Mother said, “any of them you’re interested in?”

Shit. “Uh,” he mumbled, “yeah…there’s…one—” No there wasn’t. “Uh, Jensen! He’s really good looking and I think he’s a senior—that’s not too old, Mom. He seems like a really nice guy.” So Jared was going to hell for lying to his mother. 

“That’s great, honey,” his Mom said.

\--

Predictably, Jared got wolf-related gifts for Christmas. His father gave him a T-shirt that said ‘I’m secretly a werewolf’ and his mother gave him a couple of black-leather bracelets that were supposedly purchased to support the wolf cause. (He also got other things, like jeans, a watch, some underwear—the Padaleckis always got underwear for Christmas—and socks and a few movies that seemed promising.) 

His Mom cried when he left her in the airport. He slept through the plane ride and yawned his way through getting off the plane and only woke up at last because he was tackled at the end of the arrival’s hallway by Mike. Not hugged, not greeted, not even affectionately mauled but full-on, football-tackled to the ground by Mike in the middle of the airport with frowning old ladies stepping around them and curious kids pointing fingers.

“Mike!” Jared shouted.

Mike had his arms around him and he was squeezing him to death. “Hi, Jared. You can never leave us for that long again.” His grin was huge and all teeth and for a second his eyes caught the fluorescents and reflected back at him (like dog eyes) before he straightened up. “Tom, tell him he can never leave us for that long again.”

“I’m sorry,” Tom said and held out a hand to pull Mike up, “how was your trip Jared?”

Jared was flat on his back with his carry-on bags spread out around him like a crime scene and the two of them were looking down at him and asking questions. “Uh, it was good.” Mike caught him by the wrist and yanked him up to his feet and beat him on the back in a way that was probably meant to be affectionate. “How was your holiday?”

“Long,” Tom said. His smile was strained at the edges. “Let’s head on out.”

\--

“So,” Tom said outside of the pack house after Mike had already jumped out of the car to get Jared’s bags out of the trunk and take them into the house (he wasn’t even given the option of going back to his dorm this time). He looked like he was trying to work up the nerve to say something while he picked at his keys and in the end he just sighed. “I’m glad you’re back. The guys missed you.” Then he pushed his door open and climbed out.

Chris was—as always—out on the porch. He was shirtless (still or just again) with a pair of basketball shorts that really should have left him close to hypothermic what with the chill in the air. There was a pile of butts all around the swing and a castle of beer cans growing in the corner behind him. He watched him walk past and for a moment, with a cigarette half way between his mouth and the ash tray he looked like he was going to keep his mouth shut and leave Jared’s presence alone. 

“Hey,” he said at the very last minute.

Jared wanted to ignore him more than anything but he stopped and looked at him instead. “Aren’t you cold?”

“No,” Chris said, “listen—the dog thing? You can tell him no, don’t show him your neck and tell him no.” 

Jared wasn’t sure what to think about that because for the most part the whole house seemed to ignore the fact that the dog was more than just a little bit interested in Jared’s presence. They all knew it—they couldn’t really miss it what with how they usually walked in on the dog spooning him or flopped across his chest or something like that—but they didn’t talk about it. “Okay,” he said, “thanks.”

\--

In all the months he’d been hanging out at the pack house he had never (not even once) been allowed up the stairs. Nobody had specifically said he couldn’t go upstairs, just like nobody had specifically told him he wasn’t allowed to go in the backyard but their suspicious silence and way they always told him _specifically_ where _to_ go and never mentioned the upstairs gave him the distinct impression that he wasn’t allowed in either of those places. Not to mention the stairs were dark, narrow and all around foreboding.

“You probably want a shower,” Milo said after they fed him a feast-worthy dinner after he was brought to their house instead of his pack house after he was picked up without his foreknowledge from the airport. “I mean, it’s probably been a long day for you. A shower would be nice?”

Chris was picking his teeth with a knife at the end of the table and he snorted at that statement. Christian glared at him for the noise and Zoe reached over to slap him on the shoulder. Erica was just staring at Jared with luminescent eyes that seemed oddly brighter than they ever had before. 

Jensen’s chair was, noticeably, completely empty and his name hadn’t been mentioned once since Jared arrived.

“Yeah, I guess,” Jared said.

“I’ll show you where the bathroom is,” Erica said. She pushed her chair back and Jared shrugged off her eagerness (and the feeling like he was about to be fed to some kind of monster like a virgin sacrifice). She took his hand in hers and then pressed her palm against the wall by the stairs as she stepped up into the narrow, dark, horror-movie like space. “The bulb burnt out a while ago and we never replaced it. You’re probably tall enough to reach it.”

“Maybe,” he said. 

“I’m glad you came over,” Erica said, “you know when you spend a lot of time with the same people and they start to really drive you crazy? Misha came over once but he left pretty quick—you’re like the only person that we can’t seem to scare off.” Her smile was bright enough to see in the dim light. Her fingers drummed against the wall when they reached the hall at the top and she found the switch she must have been looking for.

“That’s reassuring,” Jared said.

Erica shrugged, “so this is Mike’s room,” she pointed at a closed door at the head of the hall. “This is Christian and Milo’s,” at a different door on the opposite side. “That’s mine,” was next to Mike’s, “and this is the bathroom.” She pushed him toward the door in the center. “The room at the end is Chris’ and there’s stairs to the attic. That’s Jensen’s room. So if you’re ever up here and hear noises—it’s just him moving around up there.” 

The bathroom was shockingly tiny for the amount of people it catered to and even more shockingly clean. She pointed at the various toothpastes, tooth brushes and shampoos and told him what belonged to who. “So, what do I use?” he asked, “I mean, can I use any of them?”

“Use whatever,” she said.

\--

Jared realized, after his shower, that he hadn’t brought any clothes with him to the bathroom except the ones he’d been wearing all day. Sure, he was a guy and he was in college but he didn’t want to put back on dirty clothes because it defeated the whole purpose of washing himself clean in the first place. The hall seemed completely silent and the towel he’d been drying off with was big enough to fit around him nearly twice so he figured he could get away with sneaking down to find his clothes in his suitcase.

After all, in the months he’d been visiting the pack house he’d been exposed to more skin than he’d seen in all the online porn he’d ever watched. Only Tom seemed to understand that clothes were a vital part of common decency and it just wasn’t polite to wander around completely or partially naked. It wasn’t like they were going to say anything if he showed up naked for once.

It was only, he forgot about Ross.

Ross never came out during the daylight hours or before everyone else was asleep anyway so Jared had no reason to be worried that when he slipped out of the bathroom carrying his clothes wearing nothing but his birthday suit and a towel that he’d find Ross standing in the hallway waiting for him. In the freakish-bright lights of the hall the animal seemed even bigger than he did downstairs after dark.

“Hi,” Jared said. 

His fear wasn’t for his life, really, or even for his delicate, undressed parts, but completely based around how on edge the animal seemed to be. His hackles were raised and his tail was straight and he was growling low in his throat with a warning tone that was more than enough to give Jared the urge to roll over and show his belly.

“So, I was gone for a while,” he said to the _dog_. The hallway was drafty when he hadn’t remembered it being all that cool before he’d gotten naked (then again, he’d had layers of clothes on then). There was a cut of shadows across the floor behind the dog and when he looked up he saw the attic steps were half folded up like someone had just come out of it. “Oh, is Jensen downstairs?”

Ross bared his teeth at Jensen’s name (or maybe at the word ‘downstairs’) then snapped at the air behind him and Jared dropped the clothes he had clenched in his fist but managed to keep his hold on the towel. 

“Look, buddy, I’m working really hard at not running for my life but you’re not helping. So if you could—oh I don’t know—just chill out for a second that’d mean a lot to me.” His fingers were curling in toward a fist and the dog scented the air, paced to the left and then right and stopped to snarl at the hallway again. “God,” Jared panted, “I knew I should have just gone back to my dorm.” He crouched down to get his clothes off the floor and the dog whined at him. “Are you seriously pissed I’m taller than you?” he asked.

Ross was close enough to sniff him now, big-wet nose catching at the thin-skin on the hollows of his elbows, under his arm and up at his neck. His tongue lapped across Jared’s throbbing pulse and his thick-soft hair brushed across his bare skin. The animal whined again, butted his head against his chest and Jared put a hand on him, tightened his fingers into the hair around his neck and scratched at the skin there. 

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Jared said against the side of the dog’s face, right into his ear, “this is _insane_. Coming back for more of this is insane.” He leaned back enough to see the dog’s face and his green eyes catching the dim light and reflecting back at him. “Yeah, you might not know it—but this is fucking crazy. My Mom asked me if I had a boyfriend and I thought of you—you’re a do—animal. A great big, asshole, domineering, _jerk_ of an animal but you seem to like me.”

Ross licked his face.

“You don’t seem to understand how wrong that is,” Jared said, “I’m talking to you like you understand me. Everyone else in the house just ignores it—except Chris.”

Ross pulled his lips back away from his teeth and snarled so suddenly it was like pages in a book ripping and his shoulders under Jared’s hand went tense as his hair went up on end. 

“Hey, stop that,” Jared said and pulled at the thick hair under his hand. Retrospectively, he probably should have known that pulling on Ross’ hair will he was already snarling would end badly for him but he had some kind of false-sense of security about the whole thing. When he ended up flat on his back with what had to be damn near two hundred pounds of wolf-dog over him and teeth at his throat he realized that he really shouldn’t have done it. Talking was out of the question when he could feel the imprint of teeth on his skin and breathing was pretty damn optional too.

He did have a nice view of the ceiling and how it needed a fresh coat of paint. 

Ross relaxed after a matter of seconds and whined at him again, nosed at his jaw and then hunkered down on his belly to the side of Jared and tried to hide his face under his back. His tail was swept in tight against his body and his whines were a lot like someone’s apology would sound.

 _Oh sorry I’m completely irrational and an animal_. 

“So,” Jared said, “I think I’d be more comfortable if I had clothes. I’m going to stand up and go find my clothes now. Then we can get some sleep?”

After that, maybe he would figure out why the fuck he kept coming back to the pack house.

\--

Classes started again and Jared went back to his dorm and Chad and his insufferable smell, manners and general person. Half the time he was lying in his own maddeningly uncomfortable bed he had the urge to tackle Chad to the ground and tear his throat out.

“Jared Padalecki,” he said to himself (while he was alone), “I think you’ve finally lost your mind.”

Still, if they were all wolves, he was pretty sure that Chad would be an omega and his usefulness would have run out a long, long, long time ago. So if Jared were a wolf he would have just slaughtered him and been done with it. 

He wasn’t a wolf, he was a human and he didn’t really like the thought of killing people; not even people that were as categorically disgusting as Chad.

\--

Erica worked in the big campus library so avoiding her was next to impossible without trying to find a similarly stocked library within a suitable distance of his dorm. He thought about asking for a copy of her schedule under some pretense (he was a very likable person, nobody would suspect him of doing anything wayward or unusual) just so he could avoid her but that would have been rude.

His mother raised him right.

Subsequently, she raised him to be an easy target because Erica smiled at him with the widest, whitest, most sincere smile in the history of human smiles and put her hand across his when she saw him in the library. “Jared,” she said, “I haven’t seen you in a while. Are you alright?”

It occurred to him that she was staring at his throat. There was a line around him waiting to get some help from a librarian so he had a perfectly valid reason for cutting through small talk and getting on with how he needed help to find this book about this thing but she was just _staring_ at his throat. “Yeah, I’m good. Busy with school. How’s everyone at the pack house?” He shifted his bag so he could get the piece of paper he’d scribbled on because his memory was churning up nothing but a hundred days he’d spent at the pack house and trying to remember if any of them had been particularly interested in his throat before.

“Good,” Erica said sweetly, “really good, actually. You should come by—Christian’s learning how to bake.” Her hand was still on his hand, it was hot and he felt flushed and kind of awkward the way he’d felt when he got aroused by wriggling girls back in Texas.

Like: _not right, not right, not right, not right, not right, don’t touch me_. 

“Yeah?” he said and fumbled through the papers in his bag, “Christian? I didn’t even know he could work an oven. You know what? I forgot what I came up here for, I should just go and let you get back to work.” He pulled his hand away from her and the panicky feeling of wrongness got a little better but didn’t fade away entirely. “Say hi to everyone for me.”

Erica smiled sweetly at him, “ok, I will. If you don’t come by on your own I’m sending Milo and Christian to kidnap you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Then she turned back to look at the next person in the line.

Jared only barely managed to make it outside into the cool and crisply clean smelling air before his heart exploded. Not that he thought his heart was going to explode, just that he felt like it would if he didn’t get away from all the closed-in walls and Erica and all those people that were looking at him. He burst through the doors and ran whole-body into the poor fool that had been trying to open the door on the other side of him. They didn’t fall but only because the person had the sense to wrap an arm around Jared’s waist and the quite-frankly _astounding_ balance and strength to keep them upright.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Jared said. He clutched his hand into the person’s jacket and closed his eyes and sucked in a breath before he let it out and peeled his eyes open to see who he was apologizing to and…”Jensen?”

Jensen cocked his head to the side and didn’t smile, looking at his throat and then up at his face and only barely made any expression of recognition. “Jared,” he said.

“I didn’t know you went to the library—I mean, I guess you would if you go to school here. Come to think of it I don’t even know if you go to school here. Do you go to school here?” His heart beat was still going too fast and Jensen’s hand against his waist was warm but not in that flushed-and-gross way that Erica’s had been. 

Jensen put a hand on his arm and then up against his chest over his raging heart beat and seemed confused by that. “I don’t go to school,” Jensen said, “you should sit down.” Jensen didn’t wait for Jared to agree just pushed him toward the benches outside the library and deposited him on one. He stayed close but not quite crowding close, more like protective close. His hands let go and then pushed into the pockets of his thin jacket as he looked down at him. 

“Sorry,” Jared said again, “thanks. I don’t know what happened—I was talking to Erica and then I think I had a panic attack or something.” His face was coated in sweat when he ran his hands across it and his pulse was still throbbing faster than it should have been but it was coming down. The cool air across the back of his neck was helping ease the wild panic of claustrophobia that had crushed him inside the library. “So,” he looked up again and found Jensen staring at him (which was just weird), “if you don’t go to school here, you must be here to get Erica.”

“I must be,” Jensen agreed. 

That just hung there, between them, for a while. Jared wondered if Chris was teaching Jensen how to be a mysterious jerk the way he was practicing on how to be a stupid-cool guy because the two of them had it down pat. Jared got his breath back and his pulse down and then pushed himself up to stand on his still kind of rubbery legs.

“You should come back to the house,” Jensen said.

Jared just stared at him.

“Christian is learning to bake.”

Jensen, the elusive asshole himself, was asking Jared back to the house. “Uh,” Jared said, “yeah but—your dog…I, I kind of don’t want to keep leading him on, you know?” (Did he just say that?)

Jensen blinked at him and then turned toward the doors of the library with a stumped and confused look on his face before he looked back at Jared again. “I’ll keep him in my room,” Jensen said, “you don’t have to stay all night.”

It was such a bad idea, it was such a bad idea, it was _such_ a _bad_ idea. “Ok,” Jared said.

\--

Never, in all the time that Jared had been visiting the pack house, had it ever been completely empty or even passingly _quiet_. The silence alone was enough to leave him feeling unnerved and awkward standing in the front hall next to Jensen as he bent over to pull off his boots and then straightened and left his jacket on a hook by the door. He was wearing a thread-bare plain gray T-shirt under it and it was stretched across his shoulders in a way that made Jared remember that if Jensen were such an asshole he would have been really, really hot.

Even if he were an asshole, his ass in those pants was fantastic.

“Where is everyone?” Jared asked.

Jensen drew in a breath through his nose and looked around the living room before turning his head back to look at him. “Christian and Milo are at the store, Mike is visiting Misha, Tom is at class, Erica is at work, Zoe is on her way home and Chris is…out running.” He turned back toward the kitchen and seemed momentarily stumped, shuffled on his feet and then cleared his throat. “There is food in the kitchen.”

“Usually is,” Jared said. He tried smiling but Jensen just seemed offended by his attempt at a joke. “I’m sorry, I’m not hungry. Unless you are, I’d eat if you were eating.”

“I’m not hungry.” Jensen nodded at the living room, “we could watch a movie or play a game.” He took a step toward the room and Jared shrugged and followed after him. 

\--

As it turned out, the lesbians did want to braid his hair. Jensen had stayed in the room with him, sitting next to him on the couch like a wooden puppet pulled too tight, until everyone came home seemingly all at once. Erica and Zoe had stopped on a dime in the doorway and just stared at the two of them long enough that it made Jared feel a little bit like a freak.

It wasn’t like he asked Jensen to suddenly be possessed with the urge to watch afternoon TV with him.

After Christian came home from the store with Milo there were cookies and Mike returned like a cyclone of energy with a bag of chips swinging off his arm and shouted with his arms thrown wide open: “Jared! You are wrong, man. Misha and me were talking about it and we decided that you were completely full of shit.”

“Misha and I,” Zoe said.

Erica came back dressed in pajamas with a brush in one hand and a baggie full of little black rubber bands. She didn’t so much ask Jared if she could braid his hair as shove him on the ground in front of the couch and climb up behind him. “I’m going to play with your hair. Zoe won’t let me play with hers. Not even during sex.”

Jensen stayed next to Erica on the couch until Mike flopped down on the cushion and dragged himself closer to Jared. “You’ve got it wrong about werewolf mates,” Mike said, “Misha pointed out that not even wolves are necessarily monogamous in every situation. So if humans aren’t bound by the soul mate nonsense and wolves aren’t bound by it—why are werewolves?”

“Misha’s a stoner,” Jared said. Erica giggled behind him and rustled around in the bag to get at a rubber band. “Werewolves aren’t _real_ , Mike. I mean even in a universe where they are, it’s some kind of magic or something like that allowing them to even exist. Besides there’s a lot of lore about the power of souls. Maybe werewolves get stronger when they met their soul mate.”

Mike scrunched his nose up and Jensen shoved himself up off the couch. Erica paused for a second and Mike went really still as Jensen stepped past them. Jared tipped his head up to look at Jensen and caught the side of his face, the tight almost pained expression there and wondered what he’d said. “He doesn’t like hearing about werewolves,” Mike said.

“Nobody does,” Erica said, “you two freaks need to get a room—after I’m finished.”

“But,” Mike said, “wouldn’t you be pissed—I mean, you’re human, Jared. Wouldn’t you be pissed if you found out that you were mated to a wolf? You’d have to rearrange your DNA just to be together and you wouldn’t have _any choice_ in the matter because its destiny or some shit like that. How can you believe in something like that?”

Jared shrugged. “It’s your _soul_ mate, Mike. Step outside of your little mind for a second and imagine perfect contentment in knowing that you’ve found your other half. I mean—yeah, I’d be pissed maybe. Nobody wants to have to do something but it’s your soul mate, man. It’s perfect love.”

“Hey,” Erica said from over him, “you think werewolves have dog dicks?”

Mike stared at her like he’d never heard anything so scandalous in his life and Jared giggled at the outrage on his face. “Sure,” Jared said, “why not. Werewolves have dog dicks and fuck doggy style all the time.”

\--

Jared ended up staying the night because Christian put him into a sugar-stupor and removed his ability to form thoughts. The couch was all worn in to the shape of his body from sleeping on it so often and the blanket smelled like his sweat which meant he really, really had been sleeping over far too much. It was almost five in the morning before he dragged himself awake again and rolled over to look at the empty living room. 

He would never admit to the feeling of disappointment, not even if his life depended on it so he got up, found the bathroom and got a glass of water to rinse his mouth out. The front door was open to the cool air and the front swing was squeaking back and forth. It didn’t smell like cigarettes and there was no backdrop of beer bottles or lighter’s flicking to life to echo the swing so it probably wasn’t Chris. Jared stuck his head out and found Jensen sitting there.

Jensen looked at him, pale in the naked light bulb hanging by the front door. He looked at Jared’s bare feet all the way up to his bare neck and then turned his attention back out toward the street. “Did you sleep well?” He was dressed in the same jeans with a green T-shirt over it and no socks. The wood of the porch was cracked and cold.

“Yeah,” Jared said, “how about you?”

“I slept fine.” There was enough space next to him on the swing for another body but he didn’t seem to want Jared there (of course he didn’t seem to want him to go away either). It was an awkward, pointy kind of silence and Jared figured he should leave Jensen to steep in it and get his stuff rounded up so he could get back to the dorm. Except that Chad and Chad’s smell were back at the dorm and the pack house was insane and Jensen wasn’t welcoming but it was still better. 

“It’s a nic—“ (nice morning), Jared started to say.

Jensen bolted up off the swing, spine stiff and looking all for the world like Ross did when his hackles were raised. He reached out a hand to shove against Jared’s chest and pushed him against the screen door. “Get in the house.” He was sniffing the air and didn’t even for a second stop to think Jared was going to need an explanation for suddenly being shoved.

The door behind him kicked open and Christian was there grabbing him by the elbow and pushing him back in the house. Milo was slithering past him and Zoe caught him by the collar to throw him behind her like she was nothing. Erica was in the hallway facing the kitchen and the back door with Mike next to her and Chris was standing by the open back door with his shoulders bunched up just like a furious dog. 

“What the hell?” Jared whispered. Out front there was the sound of dog barking and all at once, everyone stood down and then turned to look at him with huge smiles and their distracting good cheer. “What the hell was that?”

“Son of a bitch!” Christian shouted from the front porch.

“Can’t get rid of me that easy,” another voice answered. Then everyone was shoving back into the room—some more literally than others. There was a shaggy blond-haired guy with an arm around Christian and the dirtiest clothes Jared had ever seen on a person hanging off him. “Look at you,” he said at Mike and Chris. “Look at _you_ ,” he said to Erica, “oh I bet you’re a real looker, aren’t you?”

“Aldis is with you?” Christian asked. He was searching around behind him for Milo and found his arm to pull him up close. The two of them were all flushed and barely dressed in pajama pants that were doing nothing to hide the fact that they were apparently very happy about this Aldis person.

“Steve, meet Jared,” Mike said.

“Wow,” Steve said, “so you must be the—“ Whatever he was going to say was cut off by everyone in the room jumping in with something dramatically important they had to say. Steve looked overwhelmed and then confused and then just looked at Jared in that same way Jensen did when he didn’t quite seem to understand what he was looking at. “Anyway, it’s good to meet you. Where’s Jensen? I love you all but I’ve really got to talk to him.”

“I’ll just go,” Jared said quietly behind all their shoulders. He picked up his shoes and his bag and headed out to the porch.


	4. (down on the floor) 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look, werewolves in the werewolf story!

In theory, and only in theory, Jared was aware that Ross was more or less an outdoor dog. He didn’t seem friendly enough to be able to have gone through his whole life coming and going at will from the pack house without getting picked up by a dog catcher for attacking some unsuspecting person or another that threatened his territory but Ross did seem smart enough to keep from getting caught. So he knew that Ross was out there somewhere, prowling around on his own but since he’d never seen the animal any other time but early in the morning staring at him while he slept he never really put any thought into it.

So when Ross showed up outside his dorm house—it struck him as odd. 

There were a few brave folks that were trying to offer him a sandwich or to get close enough to look for a tag or scratch him or something like that. Out in the sunshine, Ross was a damn pretty animal.

“It’s a wolf,” someone said to the side of him, “look at it. That’s a wolf.”

"A big fucking wolf."

Jared pushed through the small crowd and Ross caught his scent immediately and lifted himself up from where he’d been sitting and snarled at the people standing closest to him before knocking into his leg and catching his teeth on Jared’s jacket. 

“Is he yours?” someone asked.

“I’ll take him home,” Jared answered. He reached down to curl his fingers into Ross’ hair to give the impression that he was looking for the collar the dog didn’t wear and kept from talking to him as long as everyone was staring at him. “What the hell?” he demanded as soon as he was far enough away not to look too insane. He groped his pockets for his phone and called Mike.

“Hey Jared, not a good time,” Mike said as soon as the phone stopped ringing.

“Ross is dragging me to your house,” Jared said, “what the hell is going on with this dog?” He was expecting denials or jokes or anything at all but the guilty dead silence on the other end of the line. When the phone just disconnected without so much as a single excuse he jerked away from Ross. He knew that was a bad idea so when he was knocked over into a bush and knocked his back against the decorative lights planted in the mulch he wasn’t even surprised. He yanked his shirt up over his throat before Ross could get his teeth on him. “No,” he snarled back at the dog.

Ross bared his teeth at him and tried to move his hand but Jared knocked his fist against the dog’s snout and then yanked his coat up around his throat for extra cover. Ross sneezed mightily to the side and then snarled at him, snapped at his arm and pushed away from him. He paced in a tight circle before he came back and grabbed his coat in his teeth and pulled at him. 

Out of nowhere, three more giant wolf-dogs showed up behind Ross and crowded in to grab at his coat and drag him to his feet. “Who the fuck are you? Godfather dog? Is this your pack?” There was a sleek black dog, one that was so dark brown it was nearly black that looked up at him with huge puppy eyes asking for forgiveness. The third one was all muscle moving under its thick brown fur. “Fine,” he said to the dogs as they shoved at his thighs and yanked at him with their teeth, “I’m going.”

\--

The pack house was blaring sex music when the dogs shoved and dragged and otherwise motivated him up the stairs and through the front door. As soon as he was pushed into the living room the three new dogs dropped down to their bellies and Ross snarled at them, then at the open door and went to jump on it to push it shut. When he came back he circled around Jared, sniffed at his clothes and his hands and seemed even more agitated than he normally did when he was searching for a particular scent.

“Ok,” Mike said from the doorway behind him, “I just want you to know that even if this looks really, really bad—you’re the one that keeps defending soul mates. I mean, there has to be a reason that you’re such a wolf geek, right? Maybe you knew all this time?”

“What?” Jared demanded.

There was a cracking sound to the side and when he jerked back to look at where Ross had been nosing at his hand, Jensen was tipping his head back, completely fucking naked with _fur_ crawling back into his skin as his spine contorted and his _tail_ shrank back into his body. His teeth were too damn big for his mouth, slipping back up into place until with one last shuddering kind of crack, his whole body went still and he stood up.

He was _naked_ and pressed up against Jared with two hands on Jared’s jaw and his face buried in his throat as he sniffed at him. 

“ _Oh my God!_ ” Jared shouted, “You’re _werewolves_!” He jerked away from Jensen so fast he tripped on his own pants and fell against the wall. Jensen tipped his head to the side and looked furious about that (about being rejected) and then looked back at the three cowering wolves on the floor. The big one—all muscle—looked like it was rolling its eyes before it started shaking into— “Oh my _God_ , you’re _all_ werewolves!”

Chris rocked back to sit on his bare ass on the ground and licked his lips with a flat glare. “Stop shouting,” he said, “Jensen’s a lot less were and a lot more wolf than the rest of us.” He leaned to the side to grab a pair of shorts that were dropped across the cushion he usually laid around on.

“You knew!” Jared shouted. Of course they knew, they were all _werewolves_. He looked at Jensen (still naked) and put a hand up to press against his chest when he moved closer. His skin was hot and his shoulders went all bristling tight when he felt the resistance in Jared’s touch. Months ago, Erica had told him not to push Ross away and the whole fucking time it had been _Jensen_ and now he was trying to get back at Jared’s throat just like the manic damn dog that had bullied him into spooning every fucking night. “What the hell?” he demanded, “Jensen?”

“You’re mine,” Jensen said. He knocked Jared’s hand to the side and surged forward and Jared tried really hard not to shriek but he did anyway because there was a _werewolf_ moving like it was going to attack him. Jensen didn’t bite him or even hurt him, just wrapped two hands around his waist and leaned in against him to sniff at his neck and then he relaxed at whatever he smelled there. 

“Ok,” Jared said because it wasn’t like he could go anywhere and nobody else seemed that worried about what was going on. “Mike. I am going to kill you—does silver work? Because I’m seriously going to _kill_ you.”

Mike whimpered (honest to God). “Jared, come on, man. He’s my alpha, I can’t disobey him—I mean, unless I’m Chris and I like getting my ass handed to me. He’s your soul mate. Perfect love, right?”

“I’m going to smoke,” Chris said. He stopped by Mike and showed his teeth. “Try not to let the alpha kill him, huh?” He grabbed his cigarettes and lighter off the table. “Zoe, I’m watching the back,” he called before the screen door slapped open and then shut.

The sleek black wolf lifted herself up off the floor and went for the front door, stopped and nosed at it and then looked back at Mike who opened it for her. That left the other wolf laying on the floor and looking repentant like a real puppy. He wanted to ask who the hell she that was—probably not Christian or Milo if there was sex music going, that left Erica?

“What about Tom?” Jared asked. 

Jensen was relaxing more, letting there be space between them how Ross did after he was satisfied Jared had shown enough submission and wasn’t going to run away or shove him away. It was a lot slower going with Jensen than the dog but centimeter by centimeter he was getting his personal space back. 

Mike picked at his T-shirt, “Tom’s human. He’s my boyfriend but he doesn’t want to turn. I don't even want him to.” Mike shrugged, “so he’s probably not going to stop doing that. You have no idea how unlivable he’s been since you walked into that basement at the bring-a-loser party.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Jared said. His back was still against the wall and Jensen was only just far enough away to see the splash of freckles across his face clearly. His hands were falling away from Jared but he was still scenting the air around him. “So why did you decide that now was the right time to drag me here and tell me this?”

“We’re being hunted,” Jensen said. He looked down at his own body and the complete and utter lack of clothes covering it and then back up at him with his eyebrows scrunched in. “I know you want to have sex with me. I can smell it.”

Mike discovered a fascinating spot on the floor to rub his toe against but he didn’t bother to excuse himself and neither did Erica over on the floor suddenly discovering how fascinating the front window and the couch under it could be. 

“Yeah,” Jared said _slowly_ , “I don’t want to have sex with you right now. I’m kind of stuck on how we’ve known each other for about eight months and you forgot to tell me that we’re predestined to be together forever and you’re actually a _wolf_.” He leaned away from the wall and tugged his T-shirt down (incidentally his ‘I’m secretly a werewolf’ shirt) and straightened his jeans. 

To the side, Mike cleared his throat, “yeah, you know how dogs don’t really understand what you’re saying just the sound of your voice?”

Jensen was staring at him, all ‘lost in translation’ confused and then sniffing the air again. “You smell aroused when you call me Ross.”

“Oh my God, I do not!” Jared shouted, “Ross is a do—wolf! I don’t smell aroused when he’s around I smell like if I don’t lay still you’ll rip my throat out. You’re a terrible, terrible soul mate and an overbearing asshole.” He was furious like his chest was on fire and Jensen was still naked and still just look at him and idly watching the way he moved his arms to gesture along with the words. The fact that he looked completely unconcerned with how much of a dick he’d been for the past eight or so months was just that much more aggravating and he balled up his fist and _punched_ him.

“Oh fuck,” Mike shouted.

Fuck was the pain that exploded in his hand and the sudden tear of a growl he heard against his face before he hit the ground at full force with nothing to catch himself on. Jensen had wolfed out in the short space between shoving him and landing over him. He was pissed, all bristling fur and teeth snapping at his throat. Jared showed his palms and went limp under Jensen since his throat was on the line. “You see what I mean?” Jared said.

“Jared,” Mike said. He sounded helpless and pathetic and that would have meant something if the bastard had made even the slightest move to try to help him or even sideways mentioned that all their theoretical conversations in the past several months hadn’t been so very theoretical after all. “He’s an _alpha wolf_.” All Jared could see of him was his feet shifting on the floor as he hovered a few feet away. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m great,” Jared said.

Mike shifted on his feet again and Jensen snarled in his chest in a way that had nothing to do with Jared being a good little submissive bitch under him (he was angry but he wasn’t stupid enough to get his throat ripped out by a wolf). “I’ll go make dinner,” Mike said and padded off.

 

\--

Jensen stayed a wolf and nobody in the house seemed really surprised by that. Christian, Milo and a new guy named Aldis all came down from their room after the sex music went off and Christian paused only a second to look at how Jensen had him neatly trapped on the couch before he headed in to the kitchen to get dinner. 

Erica had gone to eat and Zoe whined at the front door for a second before Jensen lifted his head and snapped at the sound and then she went quiet again. Chris came back eventually, smelling like the woods and smoke and carrying a chipped bowl full of meat and vegetables and a somewhat better organized plate of it. 

“The pussies sent this for you,” Chris said. He dropped the bowl on the floor and kicked it toward Jensen with his toes. The wolf growled low in his throat and then got up to devour the whole pile of it. Chris leaned across him to hand Jared the plate. 

“Thanks,” Jared said. He stretched his legs out straight on the couch and set the plate in his lap.

Chris looked down at Jensen lapping at the plate to catch the last strings of the meat he’d just devoured. “I hope you meant at least half that shit you were talking about with soul mates and werewolves.” He was the first one that sounded like he had any kind of sympathy for Jared at all. 

“Jensen said you were being hunted,” Jared said. He looked toward the kitchen and the noise inside there, “they won’t even come in the room and he’s not exactly talking.” He nodded toward Jensen settling back down in front of the couch now that the bowl was empty. 

“Some bullshit group of batshit crazies is coming after us or something. We’re small and young and our Alpha’s thinking with his dick.” Chris shrugged and turned toward the kitchen, stopped on his way there with a sigh that seemed to heave through his whole body and looked back at Jared. “Look, you ask me? I think you’re getting fucked over. You’re definitely getting fucked—you’d be getting fucked right now if he weren’t afraid someone’s going to come through that window and try to take you. You’re pissed, you should be pissed. _Stay_ with Jensen.” Chris spread his arms and shrugged his shoulders to show he was oh-so-humble in his opinion. “He’ll keep you safe.”

“From himself?” Jared demanded.

Chris rolled his eyes, “from anything.” Then he headed back to the kitchen where the wolves were as loud as they’d ever been with no apparent care for the fact that Jared was being kept prisoner by their supposed alpha. 

“Here,” Jared said and dumped the plate into the bowl by Jensen, “I’m not hungry.” Jensen didn’t like that but he ate the food after Jared pointedly ignored his little growls and whines and rolled over so his back was facing Jensen and pulled the blanket up over his head.

\--

The darkness under the blanket was black, not gray and he groaned as he stretched out his legs and knocked his feet against the arm of the couch he was sleeping on. Everything smelled like wet dog fur and his own sweat and he wondered how he hadn’t noticed how very much this couch smelled like dog before. He listened for the tap of nails against the floor that meant Jensen was still keeping his vigil at the side of the couch and when he heard nothing he inched the blanket down away from his eyes.

Jensen was next to the bed, not as a wolf but as a man wearing a pair of loose track pants and nothing else. The video game was silent and frozen on an off-road track with some guy on an ATV going for the gold and the absurdity of a werewolf that didn’t seem to grasp the concepts of humanity playing _video games_ was just entirely too much for him to accept. He broke into giggles that racked down the inside of his ribs and got caught in his gut. Jensen looked at him with his human face exactly how Ross looked at him with his wolf face and he leaned forward, onto his knees and against the side of the couch in exactly the same way that the fucking _dog_ did. 

“What?” Jared asked, “don’t you laugh?”

Jensen’s eyebrows furrowed together. 

Oh _Christ_ , his soul mate didn’t know how to laugh. Jared pushed the blanket down so it was covering his chest and sighed at the end of the laughing fit. “I have to pee.” He pushed himself up with his elbows and Jensen moved to the side to let him stand up. For a second Jared was sure the man was going to follow after him on his hands and knees like a dog and then he lifted himself up on his feet and crowded against Jared’s back. “Wouldn’t you be able to smell someone, I mean, as long as I’m in the house aren’t I safe?”

Jensen was sniffing the sweat on the back of his T-shirt like he wasn’t trying to talk to him. “The house is protected.” If that was supposed to be reassuring it really fell short of the mark and he huffed as he headed toward the bathroom with Jensen shadowing his steps. 

“I’m doing this alone,” Jared said once they got to the door.

If Jensen really was alpha (not sure the logic in that, he would have figured at least Christian was strong enough to challenge and win) then he wasn’t used to being told what to do and the very notion of it seemed to aggravate him. He stayed though, outside the door and let Jared pee and wash his face and hands in peace.

\--

Jared couldn’t sleep and Jensen was a strange interloper when he was used to spending his early morning hours being accosted by (as it turned out) Jensen in wolf form. Jensen was just as silent and just as demanding and maybe even creepier for the fact that he looked like a _man_ and had almost none of the humanity to go behind it. 

Still, playing ATV Offroad Fury was better than being growled and nipped into forcibly spooning. Jensen sat next to him on the couch with his legs crossed and their thighs touching and just that little bit seemed to calm him down. Jared wouldn’t admit it—not for the world, not for multiple worlds—but being that close to Jensen had a dampening effect on his ragged nerves.

“This is such bullshit,” Jared mumbled to himself but there was no venom in it now.

Jensen was beating him (like just, _completely_ destroying him), when a howl came in from the back of the house. Jensen went completely stiff and then sniffed at the air, snarling in his throat and leaning forward and shoving off with his feet so when he landed on the floor he was completely wolf again and the track pants were kicked off his massive back legs. There was a thunder on the steps and the other wolves were all there in the kitchen, milling in circles while Jensen barked back at the howler.

The answer came back farther away and Jensen’s single bark was enough to send the biggest of the animals out the always open back door. (Yeah, that made sense now, why the door was always open every time of day or night.) He recognized Erica because she was the deep brown-almost-black color and looked (oddly) just like Erica.

Mike was rusty brown and that struck him as just plain weird because he figured he’d be white or something. Maybe pure snow white like his shaved head but he was a nice brown and looked over at him with pleading puppy eyes before Jensen noticed and barked at him. Mike and Erica went to the front of the house and paced by the door and the front window. The other dog—all broad in the shoulders—licked the underside of Jensen’s muzzle and then went to stand by the back door with hardly a sideways glance at Jared.

The last wolf was skin and bones under shaggy fur and didn’t look like it’d be a good match for a kitten much less hunters that were coming after them. He whined in his throat and Jensen turned and snapped at him in a threat that even if Jared knew nothing about wolves would have made his blood run cold in his veins.

“Sure,” he said to the wolves standing all around him with their hackles up, “just…nobody explain anything. It’s fine.”

In the distance, muffled and indistinct, there was a single sharp sound like a gun going off or a car backfiring and all of the wolves flinched at the noise. Jensen was growling, massive body right against Jared’s as he shifted his weight on his paws restlessly. One of the wolves whined pitifully and Jensen tipped his head back to howl. 

The sound was so damn loud in the tiny kitchen it shook the windows and the plates drying in the sink. The other wolves tipped their heads back and made mournful, worried sounds but didn’t howl like Jensen. Jared listened for the answering howl and heard nothing—Jensen shoved at him until he was against a wall, in the corner by the sink, and dragged at his shirt until he was crouching down. 

“Take care of them,” Jared said and shoved at Jensen’s shoulders. The wolf licked his muzzle and padded over to the back door, the new wolf (Steve, maybe) moved to get closer to him and Jensen turned and snapped at him again. “Focus,” Jared said, “howl—fight—something.”

The first yelp came from the front and it was followed by a growl and Christian (he was pretty damn sure that was the wolf at the back door) turned his head toward the sound at the same time Jensen started growling at the back.

Jared heard footsteps and then _everything_ exploded in absolute chaos when the window broke and the sound of a can rolling across the floor was followed by a smoky, overwhelming stench. He closed his eyes against it and slapped a hand over his mouth and couldn’t hear a damned thing over the yelp-snarl-growl-bark of the wolves and the thud-pound of human boots.

Something stabbed him in the arm and then everything went completely and terrifyingly _black_.

\--

Fear was a funny thing. Not the typical kind of funny ha-ha that caught you in the belly and made you laugh. (Made most people laugh, that was, apparently all humor was lost on Jensen which was just a shame.) Fear was that kind of funny thing that did funny things to your head while you were drugged unconscious. Jared didn’t have any damn idea where he was or if he was awake or what the plunging, inky blackness wrapped around his body meant but he understood the _fear_ that came with it. 

Fear was a swirl of colors all around his mind, drawing shapes like bubbles and then popping and splattering against the walls in a brutal splash like blood drops. Fear oozed its way down in thick streaks and made him have to piss and kind of wish he was just home again—away from here—warm and safe and wrapped up in his great big wolf blanket while he sipped some juice and watched the Discovery Channels exciting new program.

Home: where his Father wouldn’t ever let him have a dog and his Mother figured cookies could solve just about any kind of crisis he would ever find himself in. Jared wanted to find her now (through the darkness) and wrap his arms around her and believe that cookies were going to save him and his whole life hadn’t just been completely and irrevocably destroyed by _fate_ and the stupid, sick-and-twisted thought of _soul-mates_.

Perfect love was absolute fear in the dark when you had no idea where the fuck your mate was—

\--

That was the thought that ripped Jared out of the dream, dragged him right out of the soupy non-consciousness and puked him out onto the hard concrete floor of a windowless room. He was flat on his face against the gritty floor and the first thing he could smell was newsprint and copper. When he groaned he was suddenly being nosed by an unfamiliar snout that dug into his shoulder and whined at him. 

“Stop,” he groaned. His head felt like a giant, pulsing balloon and the animal was on its belly nosing its head under his arm and chest and shuffling in against him. He didn’t realize he was cold until the heat from the wolf was suddenly against him through his clothes. Then he thought he would shiver apart if he didn’t get _warm_. It was Mike against his chest who turned his head and barked one single sharp bark. There was a weight against his back and he tried to turn back and see how it was but he couldn’t make out the fur or face that close. Another weight laid across his legs daintily and the sudden heat was overwhelming and still welcome.

“Where’s Jensen?” he asked. 

Everything was dark around him, just little peeks of light through the door at the far end of the room and all of the wolves around him whined deep and low. He didn’t have a fucking wolf-to-English translator but he knew what his gut felt like and the fear he woke up with came back in an overwhelming black wave.

“Soul mates suck,” he moaned against Mike’s face by his.

Mike licked his nose and huffed at him. Jared wanted to tell him that nobody liked a jerk that said ‘I told you so’ but the heat soaking into him was shoving him back into the darkness of unconsciousness and he didn’t have the reserve to fight it.

\--

Waking up the second time involved a bucket of freezing water thrown at him and the sudden snarling fury of four huge wolves as they lunged away from his body and bared their teeth at the intruders in the room. The men in the thick-and-reinforced suits were holding shiny guns in their hands and wicked, stupid grins on their faces.

“Stupid puppies,” the man said. Another man came in behind him and dropped a white bucket of what smelled like half-rotten meat on the floor and another came with a second bucket of water. The puddle from the first bucket was spreading across the floor and soaking into the newspaper in the corner of the room. The reality of the situation hit him in the smell of piss in a closed-in space and he wanted to puke until he couldn’t stop.

“You,” the man said and pointed at him, “are one very unlucky son of a bitch. They’ll eat you before they’ll eat each other.” He was supremely amused by his own cruelty and smirked down at the wolves still growling at him.

Jared didn’t move or talk and the man seemed to be more annoyed by that than he was by the wolves stubborn lack of fear. He had something silver and shiny hanging around his neck on a chain and Jared figured it might have been a knife but he couldn’t quite see past the crowded-close bodies of the pack protecting him. 

Two men came in and cleared out the old papers and dropped new dog pads where they’d been. Then they all stepped backward to the door. The leader with the chain around his neck looked over his shoulder once and then a stack of hospital-like scrubs were tossed in the room. 

“Next time I come back,” the man said, “I want to see your human faces, puppies.” Then he ducked out of the room and slammed the door behind him. The sound of a lock slotting into place was close to deafening in the suddenly tiny room. 

Christian went across the room first, sniffed the water and then the food and then the clothes in a pile on the floor. He seemed to find them all suitable because he was shaking apart at the fur and right back into human form. He grabbed a pair of pants out of the pile to pull on over his legs.

Mike went next and Erica stayed as a wolf with a worried whine while Steve shifted back into a human and accepted the pants thrown at him. 

“You should change out of the wet clothes,” Mike said. He threw the scrubs at him. He was kind enough to turn his back while Jared worked his way out of the soaked shirt and pulled the new scrub top on. It was still freezing in the room and his jeans were warmer than the thin-ass cotton the rest of them were wearing. 

Christian started pacing with his hand running across the wall. Erica crawled forward on her belly and he patted his lap for her, she lay across his legs and he rubbed her back to try to calm the uneasy whine she kept making. 

“Is he alive?” Christian snapped at him after his pacing had shortened to a few steps either way.

“What?” Jared asked. He was still so fucking cold. Mike came back over to sit next to him and made a motion to put an arm around him and then stopped and just sat next to him. Steve had been looking through the bucket of food and must have decided it wasn’t worth eating and he came back to flop down on the other side of Jared.

“Human,’ Christian snarled at him again, “is Jensen _alive_?”

“How the fuck would I know?” Jared demanded back, “use your fucking werewolf senses—can’t you smell him? Or hear him? Or feel him through your mystical werewolf bond?”

“No, smart ass,” Christian shouted. He kicked the bucket of meat so it splattered against the wall and the smell of it was suddenly so overwhelming he very nearly puked all over Erica. “I can’t smell anything but this shit.”

Mike leaned in against his side a little closer. “You have a mystical bond to Jensen,” he said, “you’re his soul mate. If he were dead you’d feel like…well, you’d feel like half your soul died.”

Jared felt fear, black and overwhelming in his gut and his chest, but he didn’t feel like half his soul was dead. “Then he’s alive.” He kept rubbing Erica’s back, hands threaded through her thick hair as much for his own benefit as it was for her. (Maybe more for him than for her, actually.)

\--

Hours (or it felt like hours) later, Christian had gone from pacing to wolf form pacing to human pacing to snarling at the door forever and straight back to human pacing. His whole body was tense and every time Erica whined he turned around and shouted at her to shut up so his voice was echoing around the closed-in room and his anger was making the closed space very nearly unbearable. Jared had stayed quiet because he was _human_ , eighteen years old, kidnapped and so afraid, hungry and thirsty that it was making his whole body _sick_.

“Fuck!” Christian shouted and beat his fists against the door, “fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_!” He kicked at it with bare feet and left streaks of blood where the blunt pressure cracked his skin open. Mike was ducking back against the wall like he was scared and Steve was fidgeting with nerves but they were both _silent_ while Christian raged at nothing. Erica whined again, head tucked in against Jared’s belly and Christian was across the room on bare feet to dig his fingers down into her fur and pull her up. “Shut the fuck up!” he shouted at her.

Jared didn’t _intend_ to do anything, really, but he hadn’t ever been okay with men throwing women around even if they were werewolves and he never liked naked aggression either. He slapped Christian and shoved at his shoulder with no weight or strength behind him in the awkward position. “Leave her alone!” he shouted back. Erica whined again and Mike was saying something to the side that sounded like a warning. “Maybe you should just shut the fuck up,” he said right into Christian’s outraged face.

His blood hand curled up in Jared’s shirt and yanked him up to his feet with only a shiver of effort. “ _Human_ ,” he said.

“Idiot,” Jared said back.

“Christian, let him go,” Mike said, “come on, you know Jensen wouldn’t—”

“Jensen’s not _here_!” Christian shouted. He dropped Jared and scrubbed at his hair with his bloody hand and turned back around to the wall and kicked it again. His shoulders were heaving up and down as his pulse throbbed under his skin faster-and-faster than Jared had ever seen any human’s manage. 

“Christian never did like walls,” Steve said from the floor. He looked up at Jared and shrugged. 

Erica brushed her head against his thigh and looked up at him too, nudging at him until he was back against the wall and then licked his fingers and caught her teeth in his shirt so he slid back down to sit where he’d been before. 

Christian pressed his fists against the wall and his forehead against his fist and stayed still, just like that, heaving breath and furious.

\--

“Someone talk,” Jared said. He was laying down again, stretched out on uncomfortable fucking concrete with Erica letting him use her as a pillow and something to press his face against just to block out the stink of the rotting meat and the piss in the corner. His stomach was rolling over still and the deafening silence was laced with aggression and fear. 

“About what?” Mike asked. He was close-by but not against him anymore. Steve had turned back into a wolf and was curled up in the corner with his eyes catching the light and reflecting back at them. Christian was pacing again, streaks of blood spread across his pants and stomach. 

“Maybe you should start somewhere around the time you became a werewolf and keep going until you explain to me how I ended up here,” Jared said. Anger was brighter than fear and he couldn’t explain why it made the feeling of hope bloom up in his gut like if he just held onto how pissed he was to be here he was going to make it out alive. (Instead of being eaten alive, really.)

“We’ve always been werewolves,” Mike said, “it’s not a curse, it’s just the way we were born.”

“Not all of us,” Christian snapped.

Mike sighed, “Jensen, Christian, Chris, Zoe, Milo, and I—and Aldis and Steve—we were all born this way. Zoe turned Erica when she found her.”

Well, wasn’t that just nice. Jared turned his face in against her soft fur and scratched his fingers at her skin, she licked his wrist. “How were you born this way?”

“Our parents fucked,” Christian said, “the bitch got pregnant, we were born—that’s how it happens in your world, isn’t it?” He was pacing the length of the room, padding through the still drying puddle and stopping just short of where Steve was. 

“He’s right,” Mike said, “he’s a jackass but he’s right. Our parents were werewolves, their parents were—so we were born this way. We all lived together, we all grew up together and then—”

There was a scuffle outside the door and Christian stepped back away from it. Steve turned human with a groan and got to his feet, Mike was up too, all of them standing in front of him with their shoulders tense. 

When the door scraped across the floor, there was a the sudden shock of noise like everyone out there was shouting and then Jensen was thrown into the room and crashed into the bucket of rotted meat and the skidded in the bloody mess of it. He landed like a dead weight and stayed still as the noise faded out and the door slapped shut again.

The wolves went to him instantly, all with tucked tails and long tongues licking at him with helpless whines until Jensen groaned at them and came aware like a rabid animal. He tore himself back into wolf-form and snapped at them blindly and hatefully. They jumped back, down and submissive and Jared was helpless and stupid and _human_ as Jensen came over with his teeth bared and snarled at him.

“Mate,” Jared said, “I’m your mate—remember?” That didn’t seem to be doing it and none of the others seemed to be in a hurry to intervene. He was working through the blinding certainty that he was about to get eaten by his soul mate and his passive anger at Chris for promising him that Jensen was going to protect him from anything. His mind was spiraling back through his childhood (since he was about to die and all) and an encyclopedia of useless, random wolf facts rushed past him like a funnel running out of the very last grains of sand.

He rolled onto his back, hiked his shirt up and tipped his head back. “Please don’t kill me,” he whispered, “come on, _mate_ , Jensen.” He felt stupid, thought he was stupid, figured he was going to die like that and then Jensen sniffed at his navel and snarled, stepping over him so his paws were on either side of his chest and he bent his head down to sniff his neck and press his teeth against him with a growl. It wasn’t reassuring, the tight pressure of teeth and the pointed canines at his carotid artery but he held his breath and tried really hard to have faith in his soul mate.

Jensen pulled back after an eternity and Jared lifted a hand slowly to scratch at the matted fur on his neck. Jensen relaxed at the touch, moved his paws to one side of his body and lay down against him. Jared kept scratching his fur, caught in wet patches that he knew (without looking) had to be blood and felt that pain acutely as remorse, guilt and worry in his own body. 

Mike was human again, across the room, “he heals really fast. It looks bad but he’ll be fine in a few hours if he just sleeps.” He found a pair of pants to pull on and leaned back against the wall while the other wolves milled around uncertainly. “I know he seems like an asshole to you,” Mike said and rubbed at his neck, “he’s a really good guy or—wolf, I guess.”

“Why aren’t you worried?” Jared asked. He kept stroking his fingers through Jensen’s fur to keep him calm and still. “There’s no way out of here. There’s no food—you’re pissing on newspaper in the corner.”

“Human,” Christian said. When he said it that time it was less hateful and more sympathetic but it still grated on his nerves. He was leaning back against the other wall, hands scratching at Erica’s shoulders through her fur. “Our mates will come for us.”

Mike snorted. He picked at the drawstring on the pants, a slow smile playing at his lips. “Man, Zoe is going to rip them to pieces. _Chris_ will, you know he will.” There was amusement on his face at the thought of it. “You think Milo is going to try to talk them out of it?”

Christian smiled briefly, just a flash of teeth and then he tipped his head back and considered it. “Won’t matter, it won’t even matter to him once he’s here. Those stupid humans are going to die.” The light caught in his eyes and made them glow. “So we’re not worried. Not at all.”


	5. (down the floor) 5

The lights went off and the room went black. Jensen flinched, lifted his head and snarled but Jared scratched at his fur and kept him still and urged him back to sleep. He fell asleep like that, how he had with Ross spooning up against him, and woke up again with the sharp buzz of bulbs coming back to light. 

Jensen was watching him, looked more alert and aware than he had the day before and Jared wondered how he could be so damn angry at the man (or wolf) and have the deep-in-his-gut feeling of love and contentment just by being that close to him. Jensen nosed at his chin and licked his throat.

“We—most of us,” Mike said abruptly from across the room. He looked like he’d just woken up himself, “mate for life. There’s no controlling it, there’s no choice in it, you see the person you’re supposed to be with forever and your gut turns over and you have to have them. Most of us—wolves—just attack as soon as we see our soul mate. It’s what we do, you fight for dominance, you fuck and you’re mated for life.”

“Charming,” Jared said, “not exactly how we do it in the human world.”

“I know,” Mike said. He shrugged, “we’re not human, Jared. We weren’t raised human and we’ve just started getting good at acting human. Tom helps, Erica helped a lot—Chris got us started.” Mike grinned nervously at that and then sighed. “What I’m trying to say is—Jensen knows you belong to him and that’s all he understands.”

The implications of that were a little more than Jared wanted to contemplate with his hands pushed through thick wolf hair. “So what, you saw Tom and wrestled him to the ground?”

Mike laughed; Jensen turned his head toward the noise and then shifted closer to Jared like laughter was a threat to him. “No. Tom’s not my soul mate; Tom’s my boyfriend. I saw him and I wanted to talk to him, so I did. Erica told me how to ask him out and we have been dating ever since.” He sighed and looked over at the bucket they’d turned over to cover the stench of the rotting meat as best they could. He was licking at the edge of his lips.

“You’re not going to eat me are you?” Jared asked. He didn’t make a habit of believing kidnappers with guns but he’d seen how much the wolves ate in a normal day and he knew how long it had been since they last ate.

Jensen growled in his throat at the question and went tense straight down his body, lifted his head and stared out at the other wolves that only looked up enough to seem offended at the implication.

“No,” Mike said, “even if we wanted to, we’d have to get through Jensen first. If it comes down to us starving, he’ll probably kill Steve.”

Oh, well, that was reassuring.

\--

The lights went off again not long after Jensen got up and drank half a bucket of water, investigated the rotten meat, sniffed at Erica and licked her face while she whimpered, nosed at Mike until he scratched under Jensen’s muzzle, accepted Christian’s show of affection and spent entirely too long regarding Steve curled up in the corner. Jensen came back to him, stretched out against his chest and didn’t seem to mind when Jared rested his head on him but it was the way he kept staring at Steve that was really unnerving.

Especially since it made sense to kill and eat Steve for the good of the pack. He was weak and new and showed up about the same time as the threat.

The fact that it _made sense_ to him and that it _might actually happen_ just drove home the point that he was mated to a wild animal. Hell, for that matter, the fact that he’d been into wolves since he was like four suddenly made so much more sense when he was listening to Jensen’s wolf heart pound through his ribcage. 

“It hasn’t been a day,” Jared said.

“Maybe they’re trying to drive us crazy,” Mike said. He didn’t sound too worried about it. 

\--

It was Steve (who had been quiet all this time, even when his life was casually threatened) that talked next. His voice was unfamiliar in the dim light of the room and it sounded like he hadn’t used it much recently. “What’s your story?” he asked, “Jared.”

Jensen didn’t snarl or growl or otherwise tense up so he figured he could answer the question without breaking some sort of werewolf taboo. “Uh, I was born in Texas, moved here to go to college, met a bunch of werewolves at a party for losers and now I’m here.” He ruffled his hand through Jensen’s fur and tried really hard not to think about how this soul mate shit was just plain unnerving (except that he was completely at ease now that Jensen was there with him; terrified for his life, but calm about it). ‘What about you?”

“I was born in the pack, ran away after I found out the hunters were coming after Jensen’s pack and now I’m here.” He was moving around in the dark, the fuzzy outline of his body was a darker spot against the shadowy gray of the room. “I was a…friend of Jensen and Christian’s when we were small.”

“Why didn’t you come with them when they left then?” Jared asked. His whole body was aching and his belly was empty and Jensen was shifting around now, eyes reflecting in the dimness as he watched Steve moving. “I mean, if you were all friends?”

“They didn’t leave,” Steve said, “Christian and Milo were driven out of the pack by the alpha. He might have killed them—they were an abomination to him—Jensen defended them and defied his father.” He went quiet for a minute, the rustle of paper on the floor was loud with the scratch of nails and Jensen huffed and relaxed. 

The stink of urine made everyone huff or groan and Jared pressed his face in against Jensen’s fur and sucked in the smell of it—damp, matted, bloody—and only barely staved off another round of gagging nausea. His fingers tightened down in Jensen’s fur and he pulled back only when the dizzying sickness faded from his temples and the back of his throat. “When are they going to get here?”

Christian growled an answer and Steve—walking back like a human now—translated it for him. “They’re close.” Steve crouched down close but not within snapping distance of Jensen’s jaws. “You would do better if you’d allow Jensen to bite you.” His eyes caught the light and glowed, “Jensen would be stronger if you were stronger.”

That sounded great, except the part where he was pretty sure if he went wolf that fight for dominance that Jensen had been trying to rouse out of him and failing to get would start as soon as he grew a tail. He liked the idea of living but he didn’t like the idea of getting fucked for the first time in a little room by a wild animal while half his pack watched. 

Jensen must have caught the scent of his fear or the tense of his body because he growled in his throat and Steve shifted back and away and said nothing else.

\--

A crash woke him up. It came from _out there_ beyond the thick walls of the crowded room. There was a dim howl that followed it and Christian was up on his feet and howling back, jumping at the door while Mike joined in by barking louder and louder. Erica scratched at the walls, pacing back and forth and whining, revving up into a loud yapping bark and Steve added in his own howl to the chorus of noise. 

Jensen lifted himself up, one paw flat against Jared’s chest and holding him against the floor. There was nothing human in him but the command was easy enough to translate: _stay_. Jared wanted to live so he pressed his back against the floor and _stayed_.

The first scream that echoed loud enough to be heard in the room was cut off by a wet thump and Christian went _nuts_ at the door howling and scratching and biting at the flat surface of it. Jensen pushed his way to the front and snapped at him, pushed Christian back so he was behind him and sniffed at the door. They all went silent—still and quiet and tense. 

Another howl sounded right outside the room and Jensen howled back in response. Jared pressed himself even harder against the floor, tried to suck in his chest so he was flat as a pancake. The sound of a gun ricocheted outside the room and all the wolves went mad with the sound of it. 

The lock was moving in the door, grating against the frame as Jensen jumped at it and Jared sucked in a breath and just _waited_ , quietly hoping he didn’t die before he had a chance to feel as absolutely furious about the whole fucking situation as he figured he had a right to be. When the lock finished turning the door started to come open, dragging and grating against the floor. A sudden shock against it made it jerk open and slam against the wall. Tom was standing there with his shoulders back and there was a blood-soaked wolf making a turn away from it.

“The guy with the gun is locked in an office,” Tom said. Jensen was gone, just like that, with Christian right behind him and Mike paused only to lick at Tom’s hand and bark happily before he headed out with the others. Once they were all gone, Tom looked at him. “Hey,” he said, “I’ve got a car.”

\--

The building they were being held in looked like a horror movie, the gore filled, shock-value kind that were too much to be real. There were _puddles_ of blood on the floor and all through the hallway Tom pushed him through all he could hear was the dying groans and last screams of people that were being _eaten_ alive. 

They passed a wolf that was dripping blood from its coat making it look stringy and feral and ferocious. When it looked up at him it’s mouth was full of meat just _bleeding_ and hanging in strips out of its jaws. He swore to God that it _smiled_ at him and then hopped away from the body to follow after them. 

“Oh my God,” Jared said when the end of the hall had a body with its throat slashed out and its chest ripped open. “Oh my God.”

Tom just shoved at his back and Jared tripped over the body’s _arm_ and stepped on its _fingers_ and nearly puked his stomach out all over again. “Keep moving,” Tom said. His voice was steady and logical against the oppressive sound of chewing and the wolf at their back just lapping at its jaws. “Keep moving,” Tom said again and again.

Once they broke through the exit door to the open air, the rush of cool night air was too damn much and Jared stumbled into the tight bushes beyond the light of the open doorway and puked stomach acid until his throat ached. Tom pulled him back to his feet and the quiet snick of a lighter brought him back to the sudden reality that these _animals_ were masquerading as people. 

Chris was standing there, bloody and chewing at something stuck in his cheek, wearing a pair of loose shorts with a cigarette already lit and on its way to his mouth. He bent back, slid the lighter into his pocket and picked up a red gas can. 

Tom hesitated there for a second. 

Chris was splashing the gas against the sides of the building, completely unconcerned with the blood coating his chest and throat and squeezing out of the sides of his mouth as _chewed_ on the _meat_ in his jaws. “Get him out of here,” he shouted when he reached the corner. He looked over at them, eyes catching the light of the moon and making him look exactly like the thing he was. 

Tom caught him by the shoulders and pushed him toward the car that was through the trees, out of the way, parked in a spot of darkness. Jared went where he was pushed and Tom climbed into the driver’s seat, leaned over and pulled the seat belt across him to buckle him in. 

\--

Jared wasn’t asleep so he didn’t wake up but he came back from wherever he’d gone like he was waking up. The first thing that made sense was the rattling scream of terror in his chest that he kind of thought was probably hours, if not days, too late. It lanced its way out of his throat and the car he was in—Tom’s car—jerked to one side from the shock of it. A horn to the left of him screamed as an echo and the car righted itself again.

“Jesus,” Tom said, “ _Jared_.” 

Jared looked at him, at _Tom_ , at Tom the _human_ and couldn’t understand what he was seeing. He knew all the facts: dark hair, blue eyes, kind of pretty and kind of handsome, driving a beat up used car, listening to the low drone of easy rock, everything smelled like cherries and vanilla and they were driving away from a crime scene. They were driving away from a massacre.

They were driving away from a massacre.

“Don’t jump out of the car,” Tom said, “you look like you’re about to jump out of the car. Look—it’s a lot, I know. Just don’t jump out of the car.” He had both hands on the wheel and at least one of his eyes on the road as he tried to watch where they were going and keep him from bolting and the constant back-forth motion of his head made him look like a deer or a bird or something wild and sensing danger. “Jared?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I’m alright.” He wasn’t, he really, really wasn’t okay at all. “Just,” he said, “don’t take me back there; don’t take me to that house.”

“Ok,” Tom said.

\--

They ended up at a house but it wasn’t the pack house. Tom came around to his door and pulled it open and Jared climbed out on his own, looked around the nice neighborhood that seemed too quiet and too ordinary. Tom caught him by the elbow and pushed him toward the slowly rising garage door. “This is my parent’s house,” Tom said, “they’re out with my aunt right now.” He kept pushing at Jared until they were inside the garage and then inside the house and then standing on plush carpet in a pleasantly clean and perfectly neutral house. Tom let go of him then and stepped back and just waited. 

“This place is nice,” Jared said.

“Thanks?” Tom said. He was still standing there, still watching him, still looking like he was expecting Jared to just fly apart. “Look, I’m sorry about everything, I’m sorry they’re all dickheads, I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you about what they were—I… There’s no excuse for it. I’m just really sorry.”

An apology, that was kind of unique, a little strange, even.

Tom kept watching his face, “want a shower?”

Yeah, maybe, sure. 

\--

Jared woke up in a bed, like really woke up, but he wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there or even where it was. He smelled the same fruit-infused shampoo and conditioner that he’d scrubbed into his hair and scratched into his whole body the night before. It wasn’t the distant, drifting smell left over on a pillow or even in his own hair but an overwhelming smell like he was rolling in suds and bubbles. The bed was dipped to the side and his realized (slowly, now, slowly) that his arms were around the heavy and now familiar weight of Jensen’s wolf body. 

“Who’d you eat?” he mumbled into the wolf’s fur and didn’t expect an answer at all. He rolled away from Jensen, climbed off the bed and pulled at the odd-sized old-man pajamas he was wearing before heading for the door. Jensen looked over at him and Jared sighed, “bathroom,” he said. When he left the room he closed the door and made sure it latched.

Seemed stupid to try to lock a werewolf in a room but he had the itching feeling on the back of his neck that was exactly what he was trying to do. Out in the hallway he could smell bacon and he followed the scent all the way down the stairs. The carpets looked like they’d been just scrubbed clean—white and bright and damp—and there were voices coming from what had to be the kitchen. 

Mike was sitting in a chair at the table looking berated and miserable and pushing a napkin around with the sharp tines of a fork. Tom was over by the stove with a plate of bacon and two pans sizzling breakfast. 

“Bullshit,” Tom said.

Mike turned his head; eyes bright with hurt, neck scratched from his jaw to his the knob of his shoulder. His cheeks were pink and the tip of his ear was red and dried bloody. “There’s nothing I can do about it,” he said, “there’s nothing he can do about it now. Once you meet your soul mate—that’s it.”

“That’s it?” Tom repeated, “so once _you_ meet your soul mate, that’s it? I won’t exist, you won’t have any choices?”

“ _No_ ,” Mike said. There was a growl in his voice and then he sighed and shook it out. “What do you want me to do? What should I do?” He had to know Jared was there, the way his nose scented at the air and how he had turned his head so his ear was facing him. Werewolves had super sense and all—and he was acting ignorant of it. 

Tom banged the pans on the stove. “What should you do? Maybe you shouldn’t have dragged Jared back to your den as a ritual sacrifice to the alpha _wolf_. _Maybe_ you should have told him what you were instead of playing games with him and watching dumb movies! _Maybe_ you should start by apologizing to him—do you wolves do that? I mean, since you can’t just kill him.” Tom was flushed with anger, sweat on his forehead, and he pushed his hands through his hair in frustration and then dropped them down by his sides and just shook his head. “I don’t know,” Tom said after the pause.

“I didn’t eat anyone,” Mike said.

Tom’s eyebrows scrunched together. “I know that, you wouldn’t.”

Mike looked back at him hiding in the doorway, “I was talking to Jared—I didn’t eat anyone. We don’t usually kill people either.” He looked awkward the way that Tom turned away and went all red on his neck like he was embarrassed or just that angry. “They were a threat, they never would have stopped.”

Jared stood by the doorway, not sure he even wanted an explanation. He just wanted to wrap it up and pretend that it didn’t exist anymore. Maybe shove it under a really big rug and act like he didn’t notice it staring at him anymore. “I get that,” he said. 

So he was going to leave it at that.

“Chris was eating them,” he said.

Tom smacked the counter top and turned around to look at Mike with his arms crossed over his chest. Mike looked like a puppy being sent to a crate, repentant and nervous and unsure. He licked his lips twice before he looked from Tom back to Jared. “Well, Chris is an asshole.”

“Chris is the _only one_ of you stupid _dogs_ that bothered to help me!” The shout was louder than he meant and not at all what he thought he was going to say but there it was, right out there in the kitchen. “He’s the one that got _Jensen_ off me, he’s the one that told me to go away, _he’s_ the one that told me I could even _say no_ to what I thought was a fucking dog! The rest of you just pretended it _wasn’t_ happening. For the record? That’s really fucking shitty.”

“We couldn’t—”

“Shut up!” Jared shouted at him. “I don’t care! I thought I was _losing my mind_.” He turned around and found Jensen standing right there, naked as ever, head cocked to the side in confusion. “Go away,” he said, “get the fuck away from me.”

“Jared,” Mike said uselessly from behind him. 

Tom cleared his throat, “Jared, wait.”

“Fuck you too,” Jared snapped at him, “you _are_ human, you have no excuse.” He stared down at Jensen who narrowed his eyes at him and looked like he was going to fight back against the naked aggression and then, completely uncharacteristically, stepped to the side. “Thanks,” he said.

“Don’t leave,” Jensen said to his back and after the smashing sound inside of Jared’s head cleared enough to let him hear anything, Jensen added, “please.”

\--

Jared went outside, to the back yard and found Chris on a lawn chair smoking. He was still wearing those same shorts from the day before and without the blood clotting on his skin the bruised, swollen and red puff of healing skin on his shoulder was garishly noticeable. 

“Got shot,” Chris said to him or just to the book he was reading. It was a political memoir and he was over half the way through it with another stack of similar books lying around in the dewy grass. “So,” he didn’t even look up from the page he was on, “I really am an asshole.”

“Whatever,” Jared said. He sat on the edge of the deck and hissed at the cold chill of the grass under the bottoms of his feet. The morning air was crisp across his skin and the sun was hanging low in the sky still. There was a stillness all around him that expanded infinitely in every direction and washed over him like it could cleanse away the hours he’d spent in that tiny, cramped, room.

“You’re ruining my morning,” Chris said.

“Fuck you,” Jared said. He rubbed his face with his hands and then just tried to flatten his palms against his cheeks and maybe suffocate himself in the process. There were too many thoughts swimming around his head, too many things to think about, too much information to process and none of it made sense banging up against the rest. 

Chris sighed, dropped the book to the side of his chair and sat forward with his knees spread open and his toes digging into the dirt. His eyes were reflecting blue and he pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and tapped it to the side. “I don’t know what kind of bullshit they told you so far—if it was Mike doing the telling, he’s worthless. Mikey’s a good guy but he tries to be fair. You want to know the truth?”

“It’d be a nice change.”

“We’re freaks,” Chris said, “not because we’re werewolves. We’re freaks because Milo and Christian like to buttfuck and don’t want babies. The alpha of the old pack—Jensen’s daddy, by the way—he didn’t like that. He was kind of a dictator but he was a wolf, they usually are. Jensen was Daddy’s favorite, he was raised to be alpha—cut off from everything except wolves, I don’t even know how he learned to talk. Christian is Jensen’s best friend—hell, he’s his _only_ friend. Jensen didn’t like the idea of Christian getting killed so he stood up for him.” He took a drag on the cigarette and sat back against the chair.

“And?” Jared asked, “Jensen stood up for him and…?”

“For a wolf geek you’re a fucking idiot,” Chris said, “so, he _stood up for him_ , he challenged the alpha and he got his ass handed to him by his father. So instead of getting killed, old man drove him out and Christian and Milo and Mike and me. Mike was always a little odd; doesn’t believe in soul mates. I’m just an asshole.”

“Zoe?” Jared said.

“Zoe’s a lesbian and if the alpha couldn’t take dick lovers what would he say about her? She’s opportunistic, so she followed us out. Hell, she challenged Jensen for alpha of the pack once—that was a fight.” Chris took another drag and tapped the ash and blew the smoke out through his nose. “This is all just shit, the past—we’ve been out on our own for about four years. Most of them have figured out how to play human but Jensen? Jensen’s all wolf, you’re speaking and he nods along.”

Jared looked down at the grass and picked at it with his bare toes. “So, what? Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? For him?”

“Figure it out for your fucking self,” Chris said, “I just figured you should get the unbiased history.” He was settling back in against the lawn chair.

\--

By the afternoon, after Mike helped Tom bleach the bathroom from top to bottom and they’d all watched the news report about a building fire that spread into the surrounding trees and the follow up to the body of a man found mauled by some kind of wild animals in the woods (the police had no leads), everyone was gone. Chris left early after he dropped the books back into the living room. Mike went with Tom and they offered to give Jared a ride but he turned them down.

He found himself walking with a wolf at his side through a neighborhood that had a sudden heightened fear of wild animals. Jensen was calm now, against his leg with the very tips of Jared’s fingers catching in his hair while they walked.

They went for miles, past the pack house—the window was boarded up, there was the din of sex music leaking out of the cracks, past the house with that stupid party, all the way back to the campus. There weren’t many people out around the dorm in the early afternoon so he flopped back in the grass and Jensen crawled up to lay against his side and rested his big head on Jared’s arm.

The sun was warm enough to fight the chill of the breeze and the wind was a welcome relief after the cloying closeness of the room he’d been trapped in. He closed his eyes and Jensen licked the under side of his jaw. The gesture was like a lover kissing his cheek and it made him furious and hurt and left him feeling helpless and abused. He wanted to scream like a toddler screamed when they couldn’t make sense of the world all around them and couldn’t handle the feeling in their chest.

He wanted Jensen to be human. He wanted to have a choice. He wanted to forget he knew werewolves were real. He wanted to go back three days, pause and stay where he thought there was this dog that had a crush on him and werewolves were a fun story and wolves were majestic and not murderous. He wanted to be eighteen years old, at college, with no better idea what he was doing than anyone else and nothing on his mind but classes and ass and beer.

He didn’t want his _soul mate_ to be laying against his side like a dog and licking lover’s kisses into the underside of his jaw. He didn’t want the ache in his chest to feel so fucking insurmountable. He rolled onto his side and pushed his face against Jensen’s fur and dug his fingers in. 

“I’m going to get up,” he said to the back of his head, “I’m going to walk away now and you’re not going to follow me. I can’t do this. I _can’t_. You’re not even human.” There was something cracking in his chest and Jensen was pulling away from him, rolling on his belly and turning back to stare at him. “No,” Jared said—slow and careful and _sure_. “I don’t want you to bite my throat and make me your bitch.” 

Jensen whined at him, low in his belly and shuffled closer as Jared pulled away. 

He got to his feet, waited for the teeth to yank him down and nothing did so he walked toward the door of the dorm. Jensen stood there behind him, on all fours, whining in a pitch that tore into a sharp bark. He ran over to Jared, butted at the back of his leg and wound around in front of him to block the door.

“No,” Jared said, “ _no_. You’re an _animal_.” He shrugged, “it’s not your fault.” Maybe or maybe not or— “I _can’t_ ,” he said.

Jensen shifted forms, right there—where anyone could see him—and stood up to look at him. Like that he was just a fucking _kid_ , like him, all freckles and wide eyes and head cocked the side. There was pink on his cheeks and his eyes were bright and wet and blinking at him. “Why?” he said.

“You can’t—you’re naked,” Jared said, “this is the problem. This and the fact that your entire pack lied to me and fed me to you like some kind of sacrifice—I’m a human. I have feelings. I’m not your fucking bitch.”

“You could be,” Jensen said.

“Shit like that!” Jared shouted at him. Then he looked over his shoulder and then pushed Jensen toward the door. “You’re _naked_ ,” he said, “humans don’t walk around naked.” He dragged him to his room and of all the fucking luck in the world, found Chad there with a text book.

“Wow,” Chad said when he saw Jensen.

Jensen glared at Chad like he hated him and Jared grabbed his blanket off the bed to wrap around Jensen. “Go away,” Jensen snarled at Chad. Chad, showing intelligence for the first time ever, went away. 

“Ok,” Jared said, “I was kidnapped, you’re a werewolf. I’m eighteen, you’re my soul mate. I’ve never even…really dated, you want me to be your _bitch_. I realize that you were _literally_ raised by wolves and that you probably aren’t catching half of this but—no. I can’t do this. I can’t live with you, I can’t be your mate—I don’t want to be your _bitch_. I’m not a dog.”

Jensen sneered at that word. “You would be a werewolf. I’ll bite you on the full moon and—”

“The fact that _biting under the full moon_ is your idea of a first date is exactly the reason this,” he waved his finger back and forth between them, “can’t happen now.”

For a second he was sure that Jensen had reached the end of his ability to be told no, that he was going to wolf out and go for his throat and take his submission (however faked it was) by force. Wolves were wild animals and Jensen was raised to be a wolf and not a man. His eyebrows were all pulled in and he was frowning and staring down at his human body like it had somehow betrayed him and definitely baffled him. “What…” Then he paused and thought again and then cleared his throat, “when can it happen?”

Jared bit back a hysterical laugh and then pulled at his hair and watched Jensen’s frown follow him around the room. “When can it happen? When you learn to be human—when you can laugh and you can tell a joke and you can accept that I’m going to need a couple of dates before I let you bite me under the full moon.”

Jensen considered that for a moment and then let out a breath through his nose. “Okay,” he said. Then he stepped up close and reached up to touch Jared’s face. “Can I?” he said. Considering he’d been at Jared’s throat just yesterday with his teeth digging in, the question was a huge step. Jared nodded and Jensen cupped his hand around his neck and leaned in against him. He sniffed at his neck and the tugged at him and pressed his lips against the corner of Jared’s mouth. “You’re mine,” he said against his mouth. Then he licked at his jaw and turned around. The blanket dropped to the floor as he shifted back into his wolf form and scratched the door.

Jared let him out and went downstairs with him to let him out the front door as well.

\--

For the first week, nothing really made sense anymore. Chad avoided him; people asked him about the dogs that dragged him away and the two days he’d spent missing. He went to his classes and listened to the professors talk without understanding them at all. 

He wondered if that was what Jensen felt like around all the humans, hearing noise but not understanding the words. Wondered what it was like to be a wolf, to be raised by wolves and then to be betrayed by them. 

The second week he got angry, just furious and hateful and _mean_. He thought of the weeks and months he’d spent at that house. He thought of the dinners they’d shared around the table, he thought of the lies they told to his face. He thought of Jensen as a fucking dog and how they all _knew_ the truth and hadn’t told him.

The third week he was just tired, just _exhausted_ and he skipped class and stayed in bed and ignored his phone and forgot all about life. Chad didn’t say a damn thing to him about it either, even if his presence was the world’s biggest and most depressing cockblock ever.

The fourth week, Tom came to knock on his door and sat carefully on a towel on Chad’s bed. He rubbed his palms together and licked the corner of his lips. “They’re gone,” he said with a nod. “It wasn’t safe for them to be around here anymore. The police followed the reports of a big dog back to their house and—so they had to go.” He nodded again, mostly to himself. “Are you okay?”

Jared shrugged, “why wouldn’t I be? Did Mike go? Are you okay?”

“No,” Tom said, “Mike didn’t go. Jensen didn’t take that very well, he took a chunk out of him. Mike didn’t care about the piece of his ass he’s missing so much as the fact that he’s probably an omega or some shit now. I didn’t understand most of it.” He shrugged it away like it didn’t matter.

“Omegas are…” Jared stopped and then shook his head, “never mind. Doesn’t matter.” 

Tom took that as his cue to go and hovered around at the door and giving him a hug until he gave in and just hugged him. “I’m sorry, Jared. I should have said something.” He squeezed him tighter and then let him go. 

\--

Jared went home for spring break. He laid around on his bed, in the backyard, walked around his old neighborhood and thought about a lot of nothing. His third day home he tore down all of his wolf posters, collected all of the wolf shit and stuffed it into black plastic bags and took it to the curb to be carried away. His mother watched him moving it all with a horrified expression on her face and she sat him down at the kitchen table with a plate of cookies and stared at him like interrogating him for answers.

“I met my soul mate,” he said.

“Oh sweetie,” she said. He didn’t even have to lie to her, she let him cry like a baby and gave him a wet wash cloth to fix his face when he was done. Her hug was more healing than all the weeks of hate and spite and dwelling. She rubbed his back and asked him what he was going to do without having to ask him what went wrong.

“I’m going to transfer,” he said, “stay around here. I missed home a lot.”

And that was Jared’s life, up until the day he dropped out of college with no warning to move back home and found himself standing in his suddenly barren room with walls he hadn’t seen since he was ten and nothing even remotely wolf-related left except for the two slim black-leather bracelets on his left wrist.


	6. (cut you down) 1

The bell over the door was something left over from about three decades ago when the diner smack between the post office and the shoe store first opened. Of course, back then, (if you looked at the pictures behind the ancient formica counter), there was no shoe store and the post office was a vacuum depot. The pictures were half-faded and losing color but he liked them because they gave the little diner something that nowhere else he’d ever worked had—a history. The frames were old and dusty and the pictures were fading and worn at the edges from being lovingly handled by Grandma Morgan when she was losing her memory. It was her grandson that put them in frames and put them up on the wall after she passed.

So there they were, a whole row of family photos showing the progress of a shy woman’s big dream all the way up to the current owner with his strange surly grin and his arm around his wife. They didn’t have any kids, Jeff and Mrs. Morgan but they were plenty happy together raising a crowd of employees. 

Those pictures, present and past employees, were spread out by the worn-in and worn-out booths. The first few were black and white and crinkled up at the edges from hanging on cork boards and pressed between the pages of books. The former employees had brought them back one by one until there were enough to cover all the bare patches in the old walls. The uniforms started out terrifying and ended up horrendous.

“I wish they’d fix that bell,” Sandy said. She was already on, wearing the ugly-peach dress with the white apron tied around her waist. She dropped a plate of fries next to him with a little dish of pepper gravy in the center for dipping. (Morgan’s believed in gravy first and foremost.) She reached across him to grab his cup and put it back on the tray she was holding up by her shoulder without even bothering to ask him if he wanted a refill. “How’s the essay going?”

Jared had a complex relationship with the gravy that Morgan’s served with everything (like, _everything_ , nothing was safe) because after eight hours of smelling it, wiping it off tables and dishes and occasionally stirring it and drowning helpless food in it he had no desire to ever so much as think of _gravy_ ever again. Then again, it tasted _so good_. He ran three of his fries through it, rolled them a few times so they were good and coated and then popped them into his mouth. His book was spread open under his hand and the highlighter he’d been bleeding all over the pages was pressed into the center of it. “Well, I’ve got most of the first paragraph written.”

Sandy shook her head as she walked toward the kitchen.

“What?” he shouted after her. “I’m working on it!” He laughed even as she slapped open the door to the back still shaking her head. Even if he should have been back at the book before his shift, he enjoyed a few minutes to stare up at the photos framed above the table and chew on his gravy-soaked fries. The bell over the door was three-decades old and it didn’t ring anymore so much as let out discordant yelps and scratch against the door before banging back into place.

Sandy slapped his drink down on the table and folded her arm over the wide round tray. “Explain to me how you can write stupid horror stories—”

“They’re not horror.” He even opened his mouth to object but she put her finger up to hush him and he picked up his cup to drink while she continued on with the same old lecture.

“You can write stupid horror stories but you can’t manage to get better than a B on any essay you’ve ever been assigned. How is that even possible? I’ve read your writing, Jared. Stop daydreaming.” She reached forward to knock on his skull. Then she leaned in and kissed him over where her knuckles knocked into his skin. “Also, Gen is going to be working late at her fancy new job so it’s just you and me tonight. What do you say? Rent a couple of movies, have a girl’s night in?”

“You know, I’m not actually a girl.” He stuck his tongue out at her when she smiled at him in that condescending way that assured him he was completely wrong and she laughed at him as she headed back to check on her other tables.

\--

The best part of working at Morgans was the free food at closing time. When the boss man wasn’t there (or really even when he was) there was always enough bits and scrapes of things that would otherwise have been wasted to make a decent three course meal. He always stacked up the take-away boxes and hauled them home to the girls when he didn’t feel like having to make anything himself.

Their apartment, meager as it was, always smelled like pepper gravy from the stink of it on their uniforms and the take-away boxes in the trash. The girls tried to cover the stink up with candles that smelled like sugary Kool-aid or sugar cookies and even then, that damn smell of pepper gravy was always _there_. 

He dropped the bag of boxes on the counter between the sink and the stove and Sandy looked over from the couch where she was curled up with a book. “You better take a shower before we eat,” she said, “what’d you bring home?”

“Sandwiches.” He left everything on the counter and headed through the little hallway to his room. It was the size of a freaking matchbox with one wall dominated by the stupid slatted sliding closet doors that he broke once or twice a day (if not more often). There was enough space for his mattress on the floor and a skinny desk to throw his school stuff on and everything else was stacked in piles only he understood. The bottom of his closet had boxes with his socks and undershirts and boxers that usually ended up holding his notes from class, print-outs of stories he was working on, his keys and wallet and now and again his cell-phone when he lost it. “Reheat them in the oven!” he shouted, “the microwave makes the bread chewy.”

He left his work shirt and apron on the back of his desk-chair and grabbed a floppy T-shirt and a pair of sweats to wear while they watched the movie. His shoes were left at the front door and his socks got dropped into the clothes basket wedged next to the trashcan and door. His wallet he dropped on the printer and his spare change got dropped into the Star Trek collector’s cup. 

The bathroom was _barely_ big enough for him to get his shoulders through and he was always ducking down because he was sure he was going to hit his head on something even if the ceiling was clearly high enough to miss the top of his head. The girls teased him about it but they were both short so their opinions were completely invalid anyway. 

He needed to shave but he didn’t bother with it, tossed his work pants on the towel rack after he started the water and once it was warmed up he climbed into the boxy-little shower and scrubbed the scent of gravy off his skin. (Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he sometimes figured that the smell of spicy pepper gravy all over his skin would have driven Jensen right out of his little dog mind. Then he remembered that he wasn’t thinking about that or Jensen or anything werewolf related at _all_ ever again.) The soap was something with a vague flower scent, sometimes lavender, sometimes rose, one memorable time some kind of apple shit that made him question the sanity of letting two girls pick out the soap all the time. 

There was a huge difference between being gay and smelling like a fruit. That’s all he was saying.

He scrubbed his hair and ducked his head down under the water to rinse the suds down his back. Their towels were extra plush because some things were worth spending extra money on. After he was dry enough he pulled on his clothes and headed out to the living room. Sandy was already flopped onto the couch with dinner on the coffee table and the DVD in the player. 

“What are we watching?”

“Serendipity,” Sandy said, “and before you say anything about it—yes, it has Kate Beckinsale in it but just because she did that _one_ movie about werewolves…”

“Two movies,” Jared pointed out.

“Two movies about werewolves doesn’t mean that she’s a bad actress or you can never watch anything she’s in ever again. I don’t even understand what the hell you have against that movie anyway. It has vampires and werewolves—it should be your thing.”

“Werewolves are stupid,” Jared said. He sat down when she moved her legs and let her rest her feet in his lap. “Whatever, it’s your turn to pick the movie.”

\--

Jared didn’t make it very far through the movie before he realized a couple of things:

1\. It was yet another stupid romantic comedy that was peddling the wonderment and beauty of meeting your soul mate to the masses as some kind of sugar-coated candy dream. Which, as all the evidence he’d amassed showed, was _not_ the truth. So the fuck what if being around your soul mate provided you with perfect contentment and the snuggling and safe feeling of being loved unconditionally. The fact that he felt that way about an animal that had a whole pack of fellow animals perfectly okay with lying to him for months made him completely distrust the feeling.

2\. Sandy had seriously shit taste in movies.

“You believe in this crap?” Jared asked. He balled up the paper towel that he’d been wiping his mouth and fingers on and threw it at the paper plates on the table. 

Sandy was leaning back against the opposite arm of the couch with a liter of pepsi against her belly and that soul-sighing look on her face. His question seemed to jerk her out of her happy water-color dreams because she glanced at him like she had no idea what he was asking. “Romance?” she asked.

“Soul mates? Fate? Destiny?”

The front door opened and Gen came in looking exasperated and stopped short when she saw the two of them. “Oh sure,” she said, “have a girl’s night without me. Padalecki, you better have saved me something to eat.” She tossed her bag in the chair that nobody ever sat in and pulled the band keeping her hair out before she dropped into his lap with a graceless flop. “What did I miss? What are we watching?” She looked at the screen.

“You missed Jared being a bitch,” Sandy said, “he’s about to start his rant about soul mates again.”

Gen looked at him with a shake of her head. “Sweetheart,” she said and wound her arm around his shoulders, “it’s a damn good thing that you’re gay. You’d never, ever get a girl with the way you think.” She kissed his cheek and then pushed herself back up out of his lap. “Besides, everything you write is about soul mates.”

“It is not!” Jared shouted after her.

“It is so,” Gen called back, “only usually one of them is dead. Makes me wonder who fucked you over so bad.” She was rustling around in the fridge and that meant the whole conversation was over. 

Sandy was watching the TV with pronounced interest and Jared huffed and left it alone (since he was doomed to lose anyway. It was hard to defend yourself against correct assumptions). 

\--

Genevieve joined them after Sandy but she wormed her way straight through all of Jared’s walls and snuggled up next to him with her two arms around his waist and her chin against his breast bone when she smiled up at him. He figured if he weren’t gay and weren’t biologically, mystically and otherwise completely fucked to only love one person his whole life he’d probably be in love with her. (Least, that’s what he told himself when she made him paint her toes and he tried to manage the tiny little bottle in his great big hands.)

“Your essay does not suck.” She told him this while she was still in her panties (with Wonder Woman on them). She was wearing a long T-shirt over it that did nothing to cover them up. He was making eggs and she was drinking orange juice while she read the essay he’d finished up the night before. (Sleeping was something that was completely optional, really.) “Kind of heartless, devoid of personality or emotion but it’s technically excellent.”

Jared rolled his eyes. “If you have something you want to say, why don’t you just say it?”

“Ok,” Gen said. She tossed the pages onto the counter and turned so her hip was against the cabinet and looked up at him just like his mother did when she wanted him to really listen to what she was saying. “I have no idea what it is, I really don’t, but you’ve been a _bitch_ these past couple of weeks. Sandy loves you too much to tell you the truth but you need to figure out what the hell is wrong and either talk about it or work through it.” 

“I’m fine,” Jared said.

“Oh yeah,” she said, “you’re fine. Maybe you should just take a weekend and murder some more people on your laptop. Or get laid—don’t you have a date tonight? Maybe you should put your morals aside and fuck your brains out and feel better.” Then she sighed and reached over to touch his arm. “Jared, seriously, if you need to talk about something, you know you’ve got me.”

Jared nodded his head, “ok, yeah—nothing’s wrong, but if it were—yeah.” He put his arm around her and pulled her in against his side, tipped his head down and kissed her hair. “Of course I’d talk to you.”

\--

The thing about soul mates, he’d discovered, was once you found yours there really was no substitute. Sure, it was completely possible to live apart from them. He’d been doing it almost all of his life so he was an old pro at ignoring that nagging feeling that he should have someone next to him at all times. He’d realized years ago (like after Jensen), that the itchy, icky wrong feeling he got when he made out with girls (or guys) was that stupid soul mate bond telling him that he was cheating on his one true love.

In short: he was still a virgin and it seemed like a permanent condition.

However, Jared was inventive. He could date all he wanted, flirt and hang out and go see movies. He could hold hands and laugh and even now-and-again kiss. It wasn’t the most honest thing he’d ever done in his whole life since he knew that he was already paired off (forever and ever) to someone else but it kept the bitterness and loneliness from drowning him. 

He was careful, like really careful, to make sure that he didn’t lead anyone on (even when he wanted to) and to make sure everyone he went out with knew that he was just looking to have a little fun and not of the sexual kind. He’d been called everything by blue-balled assholes from a freak to a tease to a slut (not sure how that one made sense but whatever). 

The sex thing though—that he worked out with masturbation and exercise. He ran and he worked out and sometimes he went swimming at the community center. It wasn’t the best solution but barring Jensen coming back for a conjugal visit he couldn’t see what other option he had unless he wanted to panic attack and puke his way through sex.

(Somehow, that just didn’t sound like fun.)

\--

Eric was a good guy. He was a handsome guy. Hell, he was a funny guy. Barring the fact that Jared couldn’t see himself growing old with anyone besides a _wolf_ , he probably could have given a real relationship with Eric a chance. They’d been friends for a few months, met at the laundry mat, before Eric worked up to asking him out for drinks and that had gone really, really well. (Like, if Jared thought he could do it, he would have been all over him at the end of that night. If only because for a few precious hours he felt like something besides a freak that was mated to a werewolf who didn’t know how to be human.)

“I have got to remember to stop offering to buy your food for you,” Eric said. He was already finished with his meager little plate, sipping at his beer and casting long glances at the game highlights playing on the big screen TVs across the room. “How do you even fit all that food in your stomach?”

Jared shrugged, chewed on the barbecue he’d been steadily working his way through. There was about half as much as when he started and there were no beans, coleslaw, cornbread or grilled vegetables left at all. “I’m a growing boy,” he said.

Eric snorted at that, “if you grow much bigger you won’t fit through the doors.” His smile was infectious enough that it caught on Jared’s face. And times like this he really wished he could lean across the table and kiss Eric. That all this back-and-forth grinning had the potential to become something more than another fantasy that faded right back into Jensen’s stupid face. “Jared,” Eric said quietly.

In his head a thousand scenarios spun chaotic eddies because he’d heard that tone of voice before when guys he was dating (just having fun with) wanted it become something more than flirting and stares and heavy sexual tension. He didn’t blame them for wanting sex or commitment because he wanted sex and it had to show in how he casually ran his hands all over everyone he met. Just the thought of it was like a ball in his belly and he wanted so much to—

“Is this what they call slumming it?”

Jared could have picked that voice out of a stadium full of people screaming their throats raw. It was etched into his memory like the smell of gasoline and the sight of blood squeezing through the corners of the man’s mouth. He smelled the sting of nicotine, the aroma of dug-up black dirt and the wind-whipped stench of pine needles. He stilled his hands, knuckles white around the silverware he was holding and willed the universe to please, please, please, let him wake up from this nightmare.

Eric’s face was twisting into anger and hurt and staring at the space next to Jared’s shoulder. “I’m sorry?” he said.

“No you’re not, but you will be if you don’t get lost.” The body moved, all loose in the thighs and more muscle than Jared remembered. His hand shoved Eric by the shoulder across the other side of the booth and then Chris dropped into place right across from him. His shirt was so stiff it had to have just been bought but his jeans looked like he’d been running for miles (or years) in them. “Hello Jared,” he said. His grin was just as white and his blue eyes were just as stupidly blue, catching the light and reflecting back at him so he looked hollow and monstrous. 

“Do you know this asshole?” Eric asked, “who are you? Who is he?”

“You’re not getting laid,” Chris said to Eric. He sniffed at the air around him indiscreetly (and times like this, Jared wondered how he went eight months without figuring it out). “This guy really wants your ass,” Chris said and thumbed at Eric with a grin toward Jared. He reached across the table to pull the plate out from under his hands and shuffled the beer glasses out of his way. “I’ll finish this for you.”

“Who are you?” Eric shouted.

Jared slapped the knife and fork down on the table and shoved himself out of the booth. “Let him up,” he said to Chris. The little bastard just grinned up at him as he chewed on a mouthful of barbecue meat. He moved though, slid out of the seat and let Eric get past him. “You’re an asshole,” Jared said to Chris.

“I told you,” Chris said back. He sat back down to finish the food that was left over and Jared ignored him.

Eric was furious and Jared knew that without having to smell it on him. “Look,” Jared said, “he’s…a friend from a long time ago. A friend of some guy who thought he was in love with me. Just let me get rid of him and I’ll call you.”

“Are you sure?” Eric asked. He was looking back at their abandoned table. “How the hell did he find you?”

“Serendipity?” Jared said and grinned for a second before he sighed, “I’m sorry. I’ll deal with this and then call you, I promise.” He hugged him for good measure but not like he would have (not like he wanted to ten minutes ago).

\--

Chris was exactly the same; just a little bit bigger physically. By the time Jared had gotten back to the table the plates were all but licked clean and the glasses were drained dry. Chris was standing up and wiping his fingers across the pockets of his jeans. Jared ignored him as he paid the check and headed outside.

Outside was dark and the swelling knot of the moon was competing with streetlights for what would light the sidewalks. He walked toward the bus stop since he’d sent Eric away with the car and Chris followed after him six steps behind like a dog trained to heel. “What do you want?” Jared demanded while he walked.

“You’re not going to like it,” Chris assured him.

“Really?” Jared demanded as he turned around, “I already don’t like it—what do you want?” A car went by with a honk of their horn and there was a burst of laughter from a door opening behind his back. Everything was so blissfully and completely normal around him while he stared down an arrogant fuck of a werewolf. 

Chris pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and then his lighter. “Truth?” he said and didn’t wait for the obvious answer, “the batshit crazies have gone really fucking batshit and have started hunting down any human that is known to be associated with a werewolf. Unsurprisingly, they’re especially interested in any human that seems significant to an alpha werewolf. Guess what you are.”

This was not his life.

Chris ducked his head to light the cigarette and then pocketed his lighter. “Don’t run,” he said, “you know I’m faster than you and you know if I found you here that we’ve already found where you live. Not a threat—you want the truth? This is it.”

Jared rubbed his face and then turned around and cursed at the air. When he turned back around Chris was idly smoking and watching the traffic. The lights caught across the surface of his eyes and made them reflect. “God damn it,” he muttered to himself, “fine. Let’s go.”

\--

The door was unlocked when Jared got back to the apartment. Chris was right behind him, sniffing at the hallway like he found a good scent, and he stuffed both his hands down into his pockets to look at Jared with an unconcerned smile. “Don’t…be a freak,” Jared said to him before he pushed the door open. Maybe, somewhere on the way home, he had considered that the werewolves had found where he lived and maybe even talked their way into his place. He figured—maybe—Erica or Milo because they were the most normal seeming, completely inoffensive and easy to mistake for human. 

In no version of his wildest dreams did he expect to open the door and find _all_ of them. His apartment was barely big enough for the three of them—Sandy’s room was the size of a closet—and there were suddenly seven extra werewolves standing and sitting around using up all of their chipped and mismatched glasses. 

“Oh Jared!” Sandy said. She was still wearing her uniform and jumped up from the chair that nobody sat on to grab him by the arm. She dragged him past the couch where Erica, Zoe and Steve were sitting and looking remarkably awkward. Sandy stopped when they got into the kitchen, pressed into the corner by the fridge. “You know these people right?” she whispered, “they said they knew you before you transferred back here. That was like three years ago right?”

“Yeah,” Jared whispered, “I know them. Are you okay?”

“I’m a little fucking freaked out,” Sandy said. He looked past him at the crowd of unmoving werewolves that could hear everything they were whispering. “I came home from work and they were just standing around the front door and up here and when I let one of them they all came.”

“Sorry,” he said quietly, “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.” He rubbed her back and she gave him a worried look before she nodded and then let out a breath. “Go take a bath or something. You look stressed.”

“Really?” she said, “I wonder.” She made her way through the living room like she was sure they were going to turn feral and attack her. Once she was in the bathroom and the water was running Jared ran his hands through his hair and turned back around to face the crowd of werewolves. 

“You can’t be here,” he said to all of them, “this? Is not okay. This is _so_ not okay. You freaked her out.” It felt like he was talking to a great big brick wall of blankly staring eyes. Milo had the good grace to look ashamed of himself and Erica was shifting the way she sat next to Zoe uncomfortably. 

Steve looked bored with his existence, Aldis looked confused by his objections, Christian looked annoyed by his protest and Zoe looked completely disinterested in his existence. (Then again, Zoe usually looked like that, unless he’d made her food, then she loved him.) Christian looked over his shoulder at the sliding glass door that opened up onto the tiny balcony. Jensen was facing out toward the street and like he sensed that he was being stared at, he turned to look at them. 

Jared didn’t look at him, looked back over at Chris who was laid out across the chair nobody sat in like he’d found a way to make it comfortable after all. Chris grinned at him like he knew exactly what Jared was afraid of and tipped his head to look across the room like the rest of them. “I don’t give a damn what he tells you—get out of my apartment. All of you—get out.”

“Jared,” Milo said. He was holding a glass of water like he had no idea how to drink out of it. Christian at his side was holding his own glass with his fingertips and Aldis had both his hands around his tall, thin glass.

“You got tall,” Erica said from the couch. She pushed herself up and stopped in front of him. “I’m sorry Jared. We’re all really sorry—we shouldn’t have, we should have handled it all differently and we’re sorry.”

“You could have been less of an idiot,” Zoe said. “You could be less of an idiot now. You’re in danger.”

“Everyone leave,” Jensen said, “Christian, stay.”

“No, no,” Jared said, “Christian doesn’t stay. Nobody stays. Everyone goes. You go.” He was looking at Jensen, looking right at Jensen, staring right at him and his stupid face with the stupid freckles and his stupid green eyes. His stupid shoulders looked bigger the way Chris’ looked bigger and his clothes were dusty and pulled out of shape. His hair was shorter, darker and Jared didn’t _care_.

The whole pack was getting up, shoes scuffling on the floor as they headed toward the door. Even Christian was on his way through the door. “I’ll be back,” he said.

\--

Jared had enough sex dreams about Jensen to consider himself insane and to have a fully developed idea of how he figured their reunion would go. It involved begging and crying and so much sex that crawling out of bed the day after was a physical impossibility for lesser beings like him. It didn’t involve a group of ‘batshit crazies’ that wanted to kidnap or kill him and it definitely had never involved the sudden interruption of his life by a pack of werewolves. 

He wasn’t much for romance after he discovered that soul mates sucked but he had held onto the idea that if Jensen ever came back (and ended his years of living like a monk) that he’d come back by himself and possibly with a rose or just a bottle of lube. Jensen was never supposed to come back to protect him from danger, he was supposed to come back because he wanted to be there, because being away from him was too damn much to cope with. (He apparently couldn’t quash all of his romantic leanings, no matter how hard he tried.)

Jensen was holding a coffee cup in one hand with his other shoved into the pocket of his jeans. “Hello Jared,” he said. He crossed the room to stand in front of him, looked him over and scented the air. A small smile twitched at the edge of his lips and then flattened out again. “You’ve gotten taller.”

“That happens,” Jared said, “does it bother you?”

“No. You being tall never bothered me. I’m an animal but I’m not a shallow animal.” He looked down at the cup he was holding and then back at him. “I’m not sure why I have this. Your friend seemed very nervous and made us take them.”

“It’s called being a good hostess,” Jared said. There was no doubt that Jensen could smell Eric on him and smell the dirty midnight dreams that were replaying through his head right now. If he’d been able to scent arousal when Jared didn’t even know it existed he had to be able to smell it now that he’d been marinating in sexual tension for years. Maybe concentrating on that comment Jensen made about being an animal would keep his mind off how good he looked and how he’d feel completely naked and rubbing up against his body. “God damn you,” he whispered.

“I know a joke,” Jensen said. He looked nervous about it and shifted the coffee cup from one hand to the other. “Chris says it’s not a good joke.” Then he shrugged and turned his head toward the sound of the water screeching as it turned off. 

“Jensen,” Jared said, “you—you can’t be here. I can’t explain you.” (Or, more accurately, I can’t be around you because you put me in danger and give me all these thoughts and I forget how much I hate the whole situation because you make me feel whole.) He crossed the room and dropped down to sit on the couch, looked at the glasses of water left sitting on the table and the TV catching Jensen’s reflection and distorting it. “Am I being hunted?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jensen said, “I wouldn’t have brought them if there were any other way to keep you safe.” He was still standing there, moving the coffee cup around uncertainly and keeping his distance. The last time they’d been together he’d gone for Jared’s throat and whispered (you’re mine) against his mouth so the distance was— “I don’t like his smell on you,” Jensen said at last.

“Don’t worry, I’m still all yours,” he mumbled. He meant it to be bitter, to be angry, to be _hateful_ because now he knew he had a soul mate his body wouldn’t accept anything but the bona fide original. He meant it to be all these different ways but the sound of the coffee cup hitting the floor jerked him out of his wallow of pity and the way the couch moved as Jensen came over the back of it brought him back into the sudden awareness that he was dealing with a werewolf. 

Jensen was crouching on the couch cushion, hand clenched on the back of it as he stared at him. For all he’d been doing a great imitation of a human before, he looked like he had all those years ago now. His shoulders tight and all the muscles of his arms standing out under the thin shirt he wore. “Please,” he said but didn’t bother to add what he wanted.

“Can I tell you no?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jensen said, “you always could. _Please_.” He was shivering in his shoulders, down in his thighs, all that demand contained into a human body and shoved into that single word. He could have been a wolf, could have used his teeth—but there he was. Jared shifted on the couch so they were facing one another and he tipped his head back. Jensen moved forward, knees denting the cushion on either side of his thigh. His hand was rough against the back of his neck and his breath was hot against the thin skin of his neck. 

Jared curled his hands into the thin material of the T-shirt Jensen wore and let his eyes close as his whole body went kind of like jelly—useless and pliant. All at once four years of tension and aggravation was nothing at all, his mate was right there with him and it was going to be— “This is all you get,” he said.

Jensen’s teeth on his skin were a shock but the press of his tongue was like an electric shock before he pulled away. His eyes were all wolf, catching and reflecting the light at him and his mouth was a wide smile that showed his sharp-white teeth. His thumb ran down Jared’s pulse and stopped at the base of his neck without pushing pressure against him. “I didn’t want to come back like this,” he said. It was the closest thing to regret he’d ever seen or heard from the man. 

“I didn’t want you to either,” Jared said. 

“ _Oh_! I’m sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t—” Sandy was covering her eyes when Jared looked back over at her. Her cheeks were blushing up bright red and she turned her back to them. “Sorry,” she said again.

“It’s alright,” Jared said. He pushed at Jensen just enough to get him to recline backward and not enough to make it seem like he was shoving him away. (Four years was an eternity and he knew that because he’d been living it, but he wasn’t about to go testing Jensen’s control with Sandy around.) “Have you eaten?”

“No,” Jensen said. He was looking at Sandy curiously, sniffing the air less obviously than Chris had back at the restaurant. It took him a second to notice how Jared was glaring at him and then he looked concerned and offended and sat back on his ass on the couch. “You were asking her.”

“Yeah, I was,” Jared said. “Sandy, this is Jensen. Jensen this is Sandy—she’s one of my roommates. Not sure if they bothered to tell you everyone’s name or not.”

“Hi Jensen,” Sandy said.

There was a slight knock at the door before it opened and Christian came in without waiting to be invited. His hair was long now, all wild looking, and he crossed his arms over his chest and stood at the corner of the hall and living room without a word. Jensen didn’t even look at him and Sandy wouldn’t stop looking at him.

“They’re going to stay tonight,” Jared said. He tried to smile, to be reassuring, but the two preternaturally quiet werewolves staring at Sandy seemed to counteract his best efforts.

\--

Christian was stationed on the couch, pretending to sleep. Jensen hadn’t even bothered to ask where he should sleep because any time the two of them were in the same building they always ended up sleeping in a pile anyway. He followed Jared through his routine before bed—even into the tiny bathroom.

“No,” Jared said at the door way with one hand against Jensen’s chest. “First—there isn’t room, second there are some things a man has to do in privacy.” He shuffled another inch into the bathroom, stretched his hand out so just his fingertips were touching Jensen’s chest through the worn-cotton shirt and then let them fall away. “You’re just going to stand there aren’t you?” he said.

Jensen nodded.

“Fine,” Jared said, “when you hear me get in the shower you can come in and sit on the toilet.” Then he shut the door and stared at himself in the mirror. His reflection demanded to know what the holy fuck he thought he was doing so he shrugged back at it. 

Jensen came in after he stepped in under the water. He was a blurry shape standing just inside the door through the sliding doors on the shower. “I don’t like this room,” he said. If he’d been human, he might have started rifling through the medicine cabinet besides the window, maybe the stack of stuff on the back of the toilet but anything he needed to know about what Jared brushed his teeth with or took for anxiety (nothing yet) he probably could smell. 

“I didn’t ask you to come in here.” He scrubbed himself down as quickly as he could. He didn’t bother conditioning his hair, just a quick shampoo and then went to turn the water off and paused with his fingers on the knobs. “You want a shower?” he asked, “before I turn this water off?” He bit his lip when Jensen said nothing and tried to stare through the fogged over doors. (It was like having a conversation with a dog again.) “When’s the last time you even took a shower?”

The door slid open and Jensen looked in at him. In all the time they’d been…whatever…Jensen had never seen him naked before. (Well, not human Jensen, because Ross had gotten an eyeful once.) Now he was standing in the shower and Jensen was just investigating the tiny space without any real concern for his completely and utter nudity. “I’ll pass on the shower,” Jensen said. Then he moved away and Jared turned the water off. When he turned around Jensen was holding a towel into the small area with one outstretched hand. “I don’t like small spaces.”

“Imagine that,” Jared muttered to himself. He stepped out of the shower and Jensen was already opening the door with all of his clothes tucked into the crook of his arm. “Hey,” he said. Jensen headed right for his room without having to be shown the way. (No, of course not, he could probably smell Jared in the room.) He opened the door and paused there, looking around like he had back in the bathroom. “Is that why you had the whole attic?” Jared asked.

Jensen set his clothes in the basket where the other dirty ones were and poked at the buttons on the printer. “I had the attic because it was less likely any one would accidentally go into that room. I spent most of my time as a wolf.” He opened the laptop and blinked at the welcome screen that popped up and asked for a password. 

“Yeah, well, don’t do that while you’re here. I don’t think my roommates could take any more surprises.” He climbed over the mattress to get to his closet and find a pair of boxers and sweats to pull on. Whatever self-conscious shiver he’d felt (and honestly, he’d seen his body and he had nothing to be self-conscious about) was all in his head. Jensen was still investigating his piles of paper and books and pencil sharpener when he turned around again. “This is a stupid question,” Jared said, “but how’d you find me?”

Jensen straightened up and noticed him climbing into bed. He tugged at his own shirt without so much as a hint of a question about whether he was allowed to just strip down to his boxers and crawl right in. “Your last name is unusual. We knew you were from Texas. Once we got in the city we followed your scent.” He crawled up to sit next to him and watched as he pulled the blankets up to his shoulders and punched his pillows into shape. “I won’t sleep all night,” Jensen said.

No, of course not.

Jared reached into the closet, grabbed his sock bucket and dug around until he found his DS and handed it to Jensen. “Think you can figure this out?”

Jensen took the game and nodded. Then he lay down next to him, arms and legs all to himself and the space between them was awkward and pronounced and even more itchy and painful than all the time they’d spent apart for the past four years. “Good night, Jared,” Jensen said quietly.

“Good night,” he answered back.


	7. (cut you down) 2

There really was no out-smarting a werewolf that could follow your scent through an entire city. As far as he was concerned there wasn’t even a point in attempting to get away from him without directly telling him to stay right where he was and not to move. So that’s what Jared did, pointed a finger at Jensen and told him to stay right there, right on the bed, and Jensen frowned but he leaned back onto the pillow and went back to playing his game on the DS.

Christian was not sleeping but doing a credible imitation of it, stretched out on the couch with his bare feet crossed and resting on one arm of it. He looked over at Jared in the dim morning light threading through the curtains at the balcony.

“I’m making a phone call on the balcony,” Jared said. He grabbed his phone and didn’t pause to look back at Christian. He knew that attempting privacy was stupid as anything when he was dealing with creatures with extra-special senses but he was going to at least make the attempt. Out on the porch the morning air was cool and still crisp without he faint stink of traffic. He sat on the rickety old white chair and scrubbed at his hair while he searched through his contacts. He found Mike’s number and hit the send button, held it up to his ear and rubbed his thumb and fingers into his eyes. 

“Jared!” Mike said when the phone picked up, “I haven’t heard from you in—”

“He found me,” Jared said shortly, “they’re all here.”

Mike went dead quiet. Their friendship hadn’t been that easy to rescue from the rubble of those first eight months of his freshman year. Tom had been the driving force behind it, pushing at the two of them until they had it out over the phone (states away from one another) about honesty and stupid werewolves. Jared would have told Mike to go fuck himself if he hadn’t left the pack. It meant something, to know how different Mike was without the pack at his back making him follow their rules. “I didn’t know,” Mike said, “Jared.”

“I know, Mike,” Jared said, “I just—I—I don’t know what to do. Chris said something about the batshit crazies targeting humans or something. I don’t even know but they’re all here and Jensen’s sleeping in my _bed_.” He pressed against his eyebrows but it wasn’t doing a damn thing to stave off the headache broiling up behind his face. “God, I hope you never find your soul mate.”

Mike made a soft noise through the phone. “How is he?”

“Jensen? He’s great. Bigger and his hair is darker—still insanely good looking. He’s playing Mario Kart in my bed right now. I think he’s using Princess Peach—not sure what to make of that.” He was babbling and he knew it, leaned back in the chair and put his elbow up on the railing on the balcony, looked over the whole city. “I’m sorry, Mike, I didn’t—I wasn’t sure who else I could call.”

“It’s fine. I would have been pissed if you hadn’t called me about this,” Mike said. He was biting his fingernails though, trying to figure out what he could do from the east coast. “Are you going to…”

“What?” Jared asked.

“Sleep with him?” Mike said.

“Jensen comes back after four years and there are insane people that might be hunting me and your first questions is: am I going to sleep with him?” Jared asked. He stretched his legs out and didn’t dwell on the question or he’d be dwelling on four years of fantasies. “Mike, I think you need professional help. I mean that in the best possible way.”

“Oh whatever,” Mike said, “you’re the one that’s been whining about it for two years. He’s there, you’re there. You can’t get any more fucked over by fate so take what you can, man.” There was a giggle in his voice that never quite made it out of his mouth as a full-grown laugh. “Seriously, Jared. I’m not sure what you want me to do here. I’m barely even...that anymore.” (Must have been somewhere he couldn’t casually mention his former half-animal state.)

Jared sighed, “give me a convincing lie to tell my room mates about who they are and why I’m going to be under protective detail?” He looked back at the curtains that swayed in the breeze through the open door.

“I don’t condone lying,” Mike said, “if they’re there and you’re in danger you know that Jensen won’t leave and you know the pack can’t disobey him. You also know that there’s no use lying about this—they’ll find out eventually. So suck it up and tell them the truth now.” 

Yeah, no. That was just a bad idea. That was just a very bad idea. It was one thing if they were mated to one of the wolves and being molested by a pushy fucking dog every night but they weren’t and they wouldn’t be. He couldn’t just—he couldn’t do that to them. “I’ll think about it.”

“You were pissed,” Mike pointed out.

“Yeah well, I didn’t have a choice about finding out the truth, did I?” Jared snapped at him.

“Either tell them the truth or leave. That’s my advice.” He could feel Mike shrugging and it annoyed the shit out of him. “I know you’re going to hang up on me.” So Mike wouldn’t take it too personally when Jared did just that, just ended the call without so much as a good bye.

\--

Jensen came to find him first, stepped out onto the balcony wearing only his pants (no socks, no shirt) and sniffed at the air. Just that little bit of outside was enough to ease the tension in his shoulders and he looked down over the railing of the balcony at the ground. Jared watched him without saying anything, wanted to reach out and touch him, just run his hands all over his body, drag him down into his lap and forget the whole world—consequences, responsibility and stupid fucking fate. 

Jensen turned, rested his hips against the railing and folded his hands across it. There were old scars on his side, laced across his ribs like claws marks (probably were from claws). They were faint, faded back in to the natural color of his skin, but they were jagged and looked like they’d been dug into his body by cruelty. Jared looked up from the scars to see Jensen watching him. He lifted a hand to rub his thumb across the marks. “They’re from my father. He could have killed me for my disrespect and disobedience.” Then he pushed himself away from the rail. “You need to come with me.”

“I have class,” Jared said.

“I’m sure you remember the last time you were taken by these people. The room was small and it smelled like rotting flesh and urine. There were no windows and there was no heat. They meant to leave you in the room with starving animals until you became a meal.” Jensen looked down at him and held out his hand. 

He remembered it, in his nightmares, recounted it in his stories, tried to scrub it out of his mind every damn day and it was still there. “Where are we going?” 

“To join the pack, I will bring you back here afterward.”

Oh good.

\--

Gen caught him on his way out with his school bag. Her fingers dug into his arm through his shirt as she smiled charmingly at two werewolves that both looked like they were restraining their natural urge to jump on her and keep biting until she stopped moving. “Excuse me boys—I just need him for a second.” Then she dragged him into the kitchen and backed him up against the stove. “What the hell, Jared? Who are these people? Why are you going with them? Don’t you even try to tell me that they’re some great old friends because friends don’t show up en mass and scare the hell out of Sandy like that. That one looks like he wants to kill someone.”

“Slow down,” he hissed, “look—I’ve got to go, I’ll explain when I get back. It’s all fine, I promise.” 

Look at how he could lie with the best of them. He kissed her forehead before he slid away from her and headed toward the door. Christian had the door open and Milo was standing in the hallway with his shoulders back against the wall. 

“Fuck my life,” he whispered to himself. 

\--

Unsurprisingly, the pack was stationed out in the wilderness. They were ‘camped out’ in the middle of the park. The camp site looked completely legitimate until you took into account how unused and brand new everything looked. It was artfully tossed around the site and the tent was spread out inside like it had actually been slept in except for everything still smelled exactly how it did out of the box. There wasn’t even dirt on the inside of the tent.

The only thing that looked even remotely lived in was the sleeping bag thrown on the ground in front of the tent with the stack of paperbacks by it. The pages were all dog-eared and yellowed with age. There was a Sprite bottle half full of (what he hoped was) water and cigarette butts. Everything else—was just a magazine spread of a convincing camp site.

Jensen had sent Milo and Christian out into the dense woods to find the rest of the pack and they’d come back with everyone looking like they were just crawling out of a bath. Jared sat on the splintered old picnic table and rested his hands on top of his bag in his lap. 

Jensen stood next to him while everyone walked barefoot across rocks and sticks without wincing (and made him wince in sympathy for their human-looking feet). 

Chris slapped Aldis on the chest and wiggled his fingers at him. “You owe me twenty bucks, man.” He grinned like a fool while Aldis glared at him sideways.

Milo rolled his eyes, “I told you not to bet against him.”

“Whatever,” Aldis mumbled, “I don’t have my wallet with me. Put your hand down before I bite it.” He snarled at Chris who didn’t look even slightly concerned by that. He did put his hand down and looked over at Jared with a grin and a wink like he’d helped him win the money somehow. 

They formed a semi-circle in front of Jensen, all of them quiet and attentive and waiting for commands. He never saw them like that, before, just waiting for orders and it made him wonder how much they must have done behind his back. Hell—what had Jensen told them about him four years ago. Not to tell him the truth? Not to let him escape? 

“I need some air,” he said. He stood up and Jensen looked around, searching for the air that Jared needed when they were outside in a wide open space. “I’ll be over there,” he said and waved his hand in the general direction not where they were.

\--

“Jared,” Mike said when he answered the phone, “not that I don’t love you but I’ve got a job. They don’t usually like it when I’m on the phone all day.”

“What did Jensen tell you about me?” he demanded. He was out in the woods with barely two bars on his cell phone and no patience and a pack of werewolves just following orders with blind obedience. “I mean, back then, what did he tell all of you to do with me?”

“You mean, did he tell us to lie to you about what we were?” Mike asked. He must have figured out that was what Jared was asking all on his own because he charged ahead. “No. I mean, not really? Obviously kind of but not like you’re thinking.” Mike huffed and went quiet and then came back and said: “Jared, I can’t answer these questions. Talk to Jensen, hell, if he’s still around—talk to Chris.” He sounded repentant enough that it grated on Jared’s nerves but he didn’t go so far as to apologize. “Whatever happens,” Mike said, “stay with Jensen. If there’s something after you, there’s no safer place for you than next to him.”

He’d heard that before, right before he was kidnapped the last time.

\--

 

It was Erica that found him, sitting on a fallen over log kicking at the underbrush. She crept up on him quietly and came around to stand in front of him. Four years had left her tanner than before, her hair was longer and her smile wasn’t quite as sure as it had been back then. “Hey,” she said quietly, “we’re going to breakfast. There’s a buffet.” 

“Did you ever finish school?” 

Erica shook her head and then shrugged it off like it was nothing. Like she hadn’t spent almost all of her life as a human (or he figured she did, she seemed like she must have) only to be changed over into this other thing and then have her whole life torn away from her like that. Now she was being hunted—he was being hunted. “No, we’ve been moving around a lot for the past four years. I don’t regret it. You know what it feels like, to have a soul mate—to be totally and completely loved like that? I don’t regret it at all.” She smiled at him a little, wavered at the edges and then looked just defeated. “You should come to breakfast.”

“Do I even have a choice?” he asked.

There was the snap of a twig behind them and Jared looked over his shoulder to see Jensen standing there. He was wearing a jacket over his shirt now and his hair was damp from a little nature bath. “Yes,” Jensen said, “but we would like you to come.”

Erica headed back to the others but Jensen stayed until Jared picked himself up to go with them. 

\--

Jared remembered werewolf appetites very distinctly but had convinced himself in the four intervening years that he had exaggerated the memory to the point of ridiculousness. Breakfast at a poor, defenseless _buffet_ proved that rather than exaggerating the memory he had downplayed it. Their poor waitress had gone from happily amused to curiously impressed to completely horrified by the amount of food the seemingly stick-thin people were able to pack away into their guts.

“Do you only eat like once a day or something?” Jared asked. He had finished a few plates and quit (except for a trip to the dessert bar) but they had gone through ten or more plates each. “Do you burn calories faster?”

They all shrugged.

Chris was sitting at his side with Jensen on the other side. Jared wasn’t too sure how deliberate the placement was but he figured that his reluctant tolerance of the man compared to his hostility toward the rest of them might have played an important factor in it. (The other alternative was that Chris was the second best fighter and he was put there to keep Jared safe from random bloodthirsty breakfast eaters.) 

“What did you bet on?” Jared asked. Since everyone was _still_ eating and the obnoxious sound of chewing was making his vision go a little red around the edges. Jensen was happily eating country fried chicken and gravy (so he might be right about that pepper gravy thing) and drinking his twenty-something-th cup of coffee. 

Chris licked his fork and dug at something stuck between his teeth and his cheek with his tongue. “Whether you and him would fuck as soon as you got somewhere with a horizontal surface.” He picked up his water and gulped it down to swallow whatever he had stuck in his mouth then set it down and wiped his mouth on his hand. “I was on your side; Aldis sided with experience. I had faith you’d hold out like a frigid bride.” He smiled at him and went back to scooping up the last of his food with a spoon. “Although,” he said around a mouthful, “since I already won the bet you can just get off your high horse and give in. I’ve heard the urge to fuck is ridiculous.”

The waitress came by the table again to collect plates and got those big round eyes of horror at the stack they’d amassed since her last stop by. Everyone wanted refills on their drinks and she went a little pale under her pink-blush. 

Chris elbowed him once she was gone. “I’m serious. Give in while you’ve got enough self-control to decide where and when and how. The longer you put it off the worse it gets.”

Jensen leaned forward around Jared, “shut up, Chris.”

And, of course, Chris shut up just like that.

\--

Jensen brought him back to his apartment just like he promised he would. Of course, he also brought Zoe with them. The rest of the wolves headed back up to their home base to follow out whatever orders Jensen had handed out through staring and body language (or while Jared was off in the woods calling Mike to yell at him). 

Home was good, home was familiar and cozy and had all the seeming safety of habit. Except that Gen was at home and she was still waiting on a decent explanation as to who the fuck Jensen was and who his various associates were and why they were taking up space in their apartment. He’d been trying to sort through what kind of truth he could tell her all the way up from the front door of their building and by the time they found themselves in his living room he still didn’t have a fucking clue.

 _Oh, these are just some werewolf friends of mine. They just want to make sure I don’t get kidnapped because I’m actually the soul mate of this one right here—sure he looks a little too pretty to be a threat but you should see him when he’s all wolf._ It was just the thought of telling the girls that werewolves weren’t just made up things in horror movies and that bad guys weren’t some abstract thing that happened to other people but were _actively_ hunting him was…

“Jared,” Gen said. She was in the kitchen making spaghetti sauce (from scratch). The whole place smelled like her mother’s secret recipe and three days ago it would have been enough to make him swoon with happiness. “Oh, hello,” she said to the others.

“Gen this is Zoe. She’s one of…my friends from back east. You remember Jensen from this morning.” He let them all shake hands and nod at one another. Then Gen smiled at him in a pointed way that demanded answers when he hadn’t even worked out what kind of lie he could get away with. “We’re actually just here to get some of my clothes. I’m going to go hang out with them for a few days. They’ve got this awesome campsite up at the park.”

“Oh,” Gen said too happily to be sincere. 

“So I’m going to go do that,” Jared said. He pointed his thumb back at his room. Jensen followed him and stood out of the way while Jared went digging through his closet for a bag big enough to throw a few changes of clothes into. “I don’t know what to tell them,” he said.

“It will be safer for them if you are not here,” Jensen said softly. He poked at the printer buttons again, turned it on and then off and then on again.

“Whatever, this isn’t forever,” Jared said. And it wasn’t just because he couldn’t figure out how to lie to his two best friends either. (Except that it might be and it definitely was.) “Stop messing with that. Does your stupid campsite have electricity?” He pulled out his laptop bag and yanked the cord for the computer out of the wall. Jensen looked confused by the question so Jared leaned around him to pull the door open. “Zoe!” he shouted.

“Yes it does,” Zoe shouted back. 

“How far away can you hear anyway?” Jared asked, “you know, just so when I’m kidding myself about having some privacy I know exactly how far away I should get.” He stuffed the laptop into the bag and picked up his bag of clothes to throw at Jensen. He caught it and shouldered it and followed him back out of the room. “We’ll need to find a store so I can get shampoo or whatever.” He grabbed his toothbrush and his hairbrush and stuffed them both in the bag Jensen was holding.

“Are you leaving right now?” Gen asked.

“Yeah,” Jared said with a grin that felt as fake on his face as it must have looked to her, “I know, short notice but—I’m going to try and be back in a few days. You’ll tell Sandy right?” He wrapped an arm around her and kissed her forehead and then left her standing there with no real explanation at all.

“There really is no hurry,” Jensen said.

“Whatever, let’s just go.” Jared pulled the strap of the laptop bag over his head and fixed it on his shoulder so it went diagonal across his chest. 

\--

The werewolves didn’t have a car; the fact that they expected him to walk for miles struck him as especially inconsiderate. Zoe eyed the public bus (every time they got onto it) like it was specifically created to offend her senses. Her nose wrinkled up when they climbed on board and she stood with her hands daintily avoiding every surface. Jensen stood next to him wherever he ended up sitting and he kept his arms crossed over his chest.

“Do you...walk everywhere?” he asked. “Like-- _everywhere_?”

“Usually we run,” Zoe said. She made sure to look at Jensen before she spoke to him and after getting whatever non-verbal consent looked right at him for the first time since they came back and invaded his life. “We were raised that way. Normally, it isn’t a problem.” 

No, it probably wasn’t a problem for a pack of werewolves to cross large distances on foot. He turned his head to watch the road pass them by and when they got to the stop closest to the drug store he tugged on the chain. His own personal protection detail followed him off the bus and into the store without asking a question. Jensen stayed to his side and Zoe stayed right behind him. They were both sniffing at the air and watching the people in the store. 

He grabbed shampoo (didn’t matter what kind), soap (really didn’t matter what kind) and some toothpaste (he figured that mattered the least of all) on autopilot without even really seeing what he was buying. When he went around the aisle he found himself standing between thermometers and condoms. (That really made him wonder who decided how these aisles were set up.)

Jensen was right at his back, hands in his pockets, glancing around the empty aisle and looking ultimately bored. Zoe was grinning though, looking over the little packs of condoms before looking back at him. She didn’t say anything (he didn’t know if that was some kind of protocol not to speak until spoken to or if she just wanted to keep her smirky little thoughts to herself) but she arched her eyebrow and made an obvious show of looking him up and down before looking back at the condoms.

If the earth could have opened up and swallowed him whole right there, he probably would have gladly accepted his fate. As it stood, Jensen turned to look at Zoe and growled at her in the middle of a fucking drugstore like it was just that _normal_. 

“Humans use these for sex,” Zoe said calmly, “he’s thinking about you, not me.”

Jensen turned all the way around to look at the rack of condoms and seemed confused by them. If he figured out what the hell they were meant to do or not, Jared didn’t stick around to find out. (He did, however, grab lube half-blindly on his way past them.) He made it all the way to the register before they caught up with him and Jensen was edgy and frowning while the cute girl behind the counter rang up his purchases.

Outside, the afternoon was getting warm and he could feel the sweat on the back of his neck catching on his collar. Zoe watched the bus go past with a fake little frown of disappointment at missing their ride. (Fuck if he was walking all that distance to the camp site.) 

Jensen was close to him with fists shoved down into his pockets. His teeth were clenched behind his pressed-closed lips and there was a blush creeping across his cheeks that looked like it had more to do with rage than embarrassment. Zoe was giving him more space than she had before and if she had a tail it might have been tucked up between her legs. 

“What?” Jared demanded, “what happened? Why are you doing this?”

“It’ll pass,” Jensen said, “we should go.”

Right, of course, don’t tell the stupid little human anything he might not be able to understand. Jared pulled the zipper of his bag hanging off Jensen’s shoulder open and shoved the bag inside. The heat rolling off Jensen through his clothes was like a blister and his agitation was obvious in the tense of his muscles and the tick in his jaw. 

For _years_ , Jared had devoured every little bit of wolf fact he could find in the world. He’d read Julie of the Wolves in grade school while all his stupid little boy peers had mocked him for reading a girl book, he’d memorized all the lines of the classic horror movies and he’d gone dressed up as the Big Bad Wolf for Halloween two years in a row. (Granted, that was only after his father sat him down and explained why he couldn’t be Little Red Riding Hood instead.) He’d saved up his allowance to go to the zoo to hang out and watch the wolves, he’d recorded documentaries on wolves and werewolves and he’d spent eight months arguing with Mike about facts and fiction regarding (what he thought were) non-existent creatures.

He kept one hand curled around the bag and the other touched gently against Jensen’s belly as he leaned in and brushed his lips against his neck, felt stupid all crouching down next to him and then he ran his tongue up his skin. He leaned back and watched Jensen turn to look at him, confused and comforted all at the some time. “I actually don’t have any idea why I did that,” Jared said. He straightened up entirely and backed away. 

In fact, if he stopped to think about it the whole licking thing was affection and he was giving Jensen all kinds of mixed signals like some kind of damn heroine in a romance. He didn’t even know _why_ he did it (except he did, because Jensen was his mate and he was upset).

Jensen touched his elbow. Jared pulled away from him and pointed toward the bus stop. “Let’s just go.”

\--

For all that the campground was nothing more than a pretty façade it was well-stocked and more than adequately capable of handling the addition of another body. The air mattress in the oversized tent was queen sized and already inflated. There was a lantern inside and a blanket that was rolled up in the corner. They had gone so far as to buy cans of food with easy pop lids and little pans to heat the food in. There were bottles of water and the one lone electrical outlet standing by the water pump by the edge of the site had an orange utility cord that ran up to the old picnic table. 

The only thing the daringly practical werewolves had forgotten to get were citronella candles or fucking bug spray to keep from being eaten alive. He stubbornly stayed at the picnic table for a good hour, being eaten alive by annoying bugs before he gave in and retreated to the muggy safety of the tent. He ran the power cord in through the door and zipped the mesh screen as tight to the cord as he could.

Chris was laying around on his sleeping bag outside the door of the tent, reclined back on a duffle bag of whatever the fuck the werewolves carried around with them smoking contentedly. The others were out hunting (he assumed) and Jensen was probably still sitting over on the picnic table where he’d been quietly taking up space next to Jared and beating all his high scores at Mario Kart. 

“I read your stories,” Chris said, “you know, the ones that were out there to read. That one you got published in Writer’s Digest was stupid but the rest of them were okay.”

“Thanks,” Jared said. He was trying to balance the laptop on his crossed legs while perched on an air mattress that had no hope of staying inflated overnight while scratching his ankles and his wrists and that one spot at the back of his neck that felt like it had been just _gnawed_ on. “Don’t strain yourself there.”

Chris snorted. “You’re not exactly a seasoned author. Some of the shit you write reads like you should have put down the Anne Rice while you were ahead but you’re gay so I’m willing to forgive you.” He was moving outside the tent and Jared pushed the laptop to the side to flop back against the air mattress and just scratch all of the bug bites. 

“You’re an asshole,” Jared said.

Chris laughed at that. “I told you that.” 

\--

It was pitch-black outside when he woke up in the suddenly chilly tent with the air mattress half-deflated under him. The zipper on the mesh of the tent was ripping open and all he could made out in the dimness was the moonlight reflecting on shapes. “What?” he mumbled.

“Sorry,” Milo said, “didn’t mean to wake you up. Jensen was getting restless.” He pushed the mesh inward and Jensen—big, wolfy Jensen—crawled inside the tent. His eyes were bright green in the dimness, catching at the bits of moonlight. Milo grabbed the zipper once he was inside and tugged it back down toward the button. “I’m going to be right out here tonight. Christian and Zoe are out patrolling to make sure nobody finds you.” His eyes were darker, almost orange in the dimness and it was all of him that Jared could really make out.

“Why is Jensen all wolfed out?” he mumbled. Half-asleep like he was, kind of chilly, he didn’t even bother fighting against the instinct to make space for Jensen next to him. He just moved the laptop blindly and Jensen got up on the air mattress with him, turning to put his back against Jared’s side and laid down. 

“We all are,” Milo said, “it’s easier to see in the dark like this—and it’s almost the full moon. The urge to shift is a lot stronger at the moon.” He was moving back, retreating away from the open door of the tent. “Sleep well, Jared.” 

Jensen turned his head to lick his chin and then settled back down and sighed. Jared scratched through his thick hair and yawned himself right back to sleep.

\--

Morning came with a stiff pain in his ass that crawled up his spine and took its time tightening spirals around his shoulder blades. The mattress was completely flat under him and Jensen was sitting naked on the bottom corner of it, not looking particularly concerned about his nudity or the clinging chill of the morning air. 

“Ok,” Jared said once he’d peeled his eyes open, “rule one—you cannot sit there naked and watch me sleep.” He groaned as he willed himself up to sitting and tried to work the crick out of his neck. He arched his back and tried to pop it and when it didn’t give—just ached more—he figured he had to get up and out of the too damn small tent and stretch it out right. 

“Would you care if I watched you sleep with clothes on?” Jensen asked. He was already moving toward the door, rolling up onto his feet and walking like a frog over to the door to unzip it. It smelled like smoke and overcooked beans once the door was opened and Jared wanted to just roll over and bury his face in the mattress until the whole world went away again. 

“Yes,” Jared said, “well—watching me sleep with clothes on is less creepy.” He shoved himself up and escaped from the tent with his dignity more or less completely intact. The whole pack was sitting around the picnic table making a pretty picture of lounging werewolves arguing about the proper way to cook beans over an open flame. As soon as Jensen straightened up they all went quiet. “Is that some alpha werewolf shit? They can’t talk when you’re around? They used to talk when you were around.”

“I don’t tell them they can’t speak,” Jensen said. He picked up his clothes from where they’d been left folded up by the tent. He stepped into them and looked over at the table where all of the wolves were still watching him without saying a word. “I think it’s you.”

Chris made a noise like a groan and Erica covered her face with her palm. Milo had enough sense to just sigh.

“Oh right,” Jared snapped, “because the little idiot human is scary enough to make a whole _pack of wolves_ go quiet. What are they afraid I won’t understand what they’re talking about?” It was just a bad morning following a bad day capping off four years of lost freedom. “You know what? Forget it! Forget this, forget you, forget your batshit crazies and their batshit torture—forget all of it. I don’t care. I don’t care about you—or them—or any of it.”

“Pay up,” Chris said smugly and held his hand out across the table. He wiggled his fingers at Aldis who glared at him like he wanted to go wolf and tear his throat out for being such a jerk. “Sorry,” Chris said, “your speech had passion man. Keep going. We’re stupid, you’re angry, who cares if you get dismembered by the nice crazy people.”

“Fuck you!” Jared shouted at them. “And you,” he said at Jensen, “maybe especially you. I didn’t ask for this—I didn’t ask for you. I don’t want any of this.” He shoved Jensen, two hands against his shoulders, just shoved him as hard as he could like trying to push a tree and Jensen moved with the shove just enough to dig his feet into the dirt and then he shoved _back_ against him. Jared tripped over the sleeping bag behind him but Jensen caught him in two hands and kept pushing at him until he was against the tree.

“You will not talk to them like that,” Jensen said. His voice was even and calm but he looked as murderous as a wild animal defending its territory. “Anything they did they did under my direction. I asked them to keep my secret. I asked them to bring you back to me when we first met. I asked them to find you when you left for a week. I asked them to protect you. That’s all they did. You can hate me for what happened, leave them alone.” Then he pushed away from him. The others were ducking their heads at the table, picking fingernails at the picnic table.

Jared straightened himself up slowly, watched Jensen glaring at him from the short distance away and wasn’t sure what to do next. He was furious and he was hurt and he wanted to be anywhere but a camp site with a pack of werewolves. He didn’t want to be hunted, he didn’t want to be a wolf, he didn’t even want to have to _think_ about anything but how it had felt four years ago when he realized he had been an _idiot_ and they had lied to his face for months. He wasn’t sure what to do with Jensen’s words because the man had followed him around like a dog and as a dog and he’d attacked him for his throat but he’d never said a damn word in his own defense before.

Jensen looked away from him, back at the pack and looked uncertain about something before looking back at him. “There are showers here. Someone will go with you if you want to go.” Then he turned to walk away. “Whoever he asks,” he said to the pack as he passed them before he headed into the woods.

Chris was the first one that spoke, just coughed and then reached across the table again. Aldis didn’t even have the energy to be disgusted with him.

“I’ll go with you,” Christian said. It didn’t sound much like an offer, more like a threat or just something to break the silence before it got suffocating. Jared didn’t care—not really at all—so he nodded and ducked into the tent to grab his bag.


	8. (cut you down) 3

Jared felt human again after a hot shower in a tiny square stall that the campground called a real shower. The water didn’t get much better than warm but it was enough to ease the ache in his muscles. He didn’t have a towel so he had get dressed while he was still damp and left his shirt off while his hair dripped down his neck. 

Christian wasn’t there when he came out of the shower, Jensen had taken his place and was sitting on the railing with his feet on the bench. He was watching the sky, still wearing nothing but those faded, worn-out jeans. His elbows were on his thighs and his fingers were woven together and hanging between his knees. He didn’t even look at Jared when he stepped out of the shower. 

“What is this, the werewolf cold shoulder? I say something you don’t like and you…what?” He dropped his shoes on the bench and his pile of yesterday’s clothes on top of them in a heap. The smell of the soggy shower and the off-brand shampoo was hanging around him like a bad fog.

Jensen’s toes had dirt on them, scratches over the tops of his feet and little brambles caught on the bottom of his jeans. “You say a lot that I don’t like,” Jensen said. As accusations went it was flat and toneless and lacked any kind of real venom behind it. He straightened his back and stood up, stepped off the bench and moved around to the stairs. 

Jared sat down and pulled his socks on and then his shoes and ignored the way Jensen wasn’t even bothering to look at him. So he was angry—or hurt, or whatever the fuck. It didn’t matter because Jared hadn’t shown up and ruined his entire life. “Damn it,” he mumbled to himself and tugged the ties on his shoes tight. “You don’t get to act hurt now. You don’t get to do that.” He stood up and stomped his foot down to get the shoe on right, didn’t do much more than make a hollow, flat and childish noise by doing it. “I never lied to you. I never made you feel like an idiot—”

“You have no idea,” Jensen said quietly. The tone was so low and shallow and it sliced right through Jared’s words and left the meaningless.

“No idea about what?” Jared shouted at him, “no idea why the fuck you acted like a dog for eight months? No idea why you couldn’t just—ask me out? Or tell me we were soul mates or fucking…oh, I don’t know, mention that you’ve got four legs and a tail most of the time? What the fuck did you think I was going to do, Jensen? What the fuck?”

Jensen’s sneer was disgusted with him, he had his fingers wrapped around the railing on the stairs tight enough his knuckles went white and the wood creaked. “You said it yourself, back when you left me—I’m just an animal. That’s what you said, you’re a human and I’m an animal. I never lied to you, I showed you exactly what I was and I did what I thought was the right thing. Do you understand that?”

“You attacked me!” Jared shouted.

“That’s what we do!” He let go of the railing and rounded around to stare at him. There was all the fury showed in his wolf form, wrapped up in a human face and turning pink with the effort of it. “That’s what we do, that’s how I was raised. You’re mine, after I saw you—after I smelled you—I knew that. You were mine and it’s my right to take you. That was how I was raised and you gave me your _neck_ , you did it every damn time.”

“Yeah,” Jared snapped back, “because you were a wolf-dog that snarled at me and had teeth like God-damned kitchen knives! What the fuck was I supposed to do? Nobody told me I could tell you no or that you weren’t going to hurt me or—”

“You were never afraid of me,” Jensen said. “I can smell that, you were never afraid of me, all of those times. You kept talking and talking and saying I freaked you out—and I’d heard those words before but you didn’t smell afraid and you didn’t act afraid when you wrapped your body around mine. You weren’t afraid of me until you came back from being gone.”

“What?” Jared demanded, “when was I gone?”

“Christmas. You were afraid of me then, for the first time.” And then Jensen showed up as a human and promised him he’d keep the dog locked in his room. 

“That’s your defense? I wasn’t afraid? You didn’t know any better? That’s fucking ridiculous.” He shook his head and Jensen’s fists clenched at his sides. “ _Ridiculous_ ,” he repeated.

“You’re ridiculous,” Jensen said, “and a liar.”

“A liar?”

“For months Mike tried to convince you that werewolves were animals and that soul mates were impossible and unnatural. Every time you defended us and you defended soul mates—you talked about unconditional love and contentment.” (And as far as he knew, Jensen had been hiding up the stairs in whatever dark corner he lived in. But werewolves could hear everything, of course.) “You don’t believe any of it.”

“I didn’t know werewolves ate people and that my soul mate would ruin _my life_!” Jared shouted at him. “I was _eighteen_ and you were asking for my _soul_ , give me a break if I wasn’t quite ready to part with it.” He grabbed his clothes off the bench and shoved past Jensen, knocked his shoulder against him and Jensen grabbed his elbow and yanked him back. Jared wanted to hit him but he slapped both hands around his face, and pulled him closer. Jensen moved with it, arms over his shoulders, the whole length of his body heavy and pulling him down as he slanted his mouth across Jared’s and shoved his tongue into his mouth. 

Jensen’s hands were dug in hard against his skin, his nails pressing close enough to draw blood and Jared tightened his own hands and shuffled forward with one shoe on all wrong. Jensen moved with him until they slapped against the door of one of the shower stalls and it groaned with the effort of keeping them upright. 

Jared hadn’t kissed many people in his life (enough but not a lot) but Jensen hadn’t kissed any and all of his blind enthusiasm was messy and greedy and needy. His body was pressing close against Jared’s, thighs spread around his leg and pressing close enough to rasp denim against denim and leave him feeling like sandpaper had scraped his skin off. 

It was a dizzying high of _oh God_ and _yes, finally_ and he slapped both his hands against the door behind Jensen’s back and shoved himself away. “Wait,” he said, “wait-stop-wait.” He licked his lips and Jensen licked his own and they panted in the same shared breath space. Jared stepped back and Jensen let him go without fighting to keep him. “We should go back.”

\--

Erica made him breakfast out of the cans of food (which meant Spaghetti-Os and baked beans) and sat with him while the others went to get washed up in shifts. She was quiet and easy to ignore as she sat across from him with her fingers twisted in the long ends of her hair.

“We never thought you were stupid,” Erica said finally. She said it like she’d been waiting for the perfect moment and just got tired of holding her breath. Her hands pressed flat against the table and she shrugged to punctuate what she said. “We liked you. It wasn’t right, I mean—we all knew that. Tom was so angry about it the whole time, he made Mike miserable.” She smiled half way and then let it fade away. “I just figure you should know that.”

Jared finished the last mouthful of beans and dropped his spoon on the paper plate. “I don’t want to give up my life.”

“Who asked you to?” Erica asked. 

Jared didn’t have an answer for that but he wasn’t too proud to go and sulk in the tent while he pretended to think about it and mostly just stewed on how good it had felt to kiss Jensen. When the memory faded and left him feeling like kind of an asshole he thought his way through everything Jensen had said.

\--

The phone rang just after he’d finished blowing the air mattress up again. His protective guard had changed from Aldis (who he didn’t know really, and didn’t bother to talk to him) to Chris again. Chris flopped out on his raggedy sleeping bag with a book and a cigarette and acted the least concerned out of all of them. Jared had been sulking in the tent most of the morning, trying to sort out if he even cared that Jensen had been under the impression that he was all for the spooning and that he was only slightly technically right when he said he showed Jared exactly what he was.

“Chris,” Jared said. More often than not, he really-really-really wished that there was an honest damn person in the pack that wasn’t also an asshole. Once upon a time he would have put that label on Milo and maybe Milo was a perfectly harmless and delightfully truthful person (or wolf) but Jared still didn’t trust him. (Well he did, he trusted him with his life because like-it-or-not he trusted Jensen with his life and trusted the pack to follow Jensen.) 

“Yup,” Chris said, “you’re being an idiot. Jensen really does love you—I would know, he picked me to make him a real boy.” 

That was comforting. Jared found the pump they were using to pump up the air mattress just to have something to do with the pent up frustration knocking around his muscles and ignored how he wanted to scream until the universe made sense again. “How can he love me when he doesn’t know anything about me?” he demanded halfway through inflating the mattress.

“You’re getting confused again,” Chris said. He flicked the ash at the ground and then dropped the butt of the cigarette into his bottle. “He knows a lot about you—he spent eight months learning everything he could about you. He even knows you’re an English major and a writer now because I told him but that doesn’t mean shit to him—he knows your favorite food, we had to teach him how to make it. _You_ don’t know anything about him.”

It was about then that the phone rang and Jared pulled it out of his pocket. Gen’s pretty grinning face stared at him from the screen and he drew in a breath and hit the accept button. “Hey,” he said as happily as he could. (Since they were all out here camping, all out here having fun.) She was crying on the other end, just word-eating, snot-producing, eye-swelling sobs that he couldn’t make much sense of. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Gen! What’s going on?”

“Could you just come home?” she hiccupped at him, “please?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be there as soon as I can be.” He hung up on her and stepped across the mattress, narrowly avoided crushing his laptop and yanked the zipper on the tent door open and crawled out. “I need to go back to my place. One of my roommates is—” Half of the werewolves were staring at him, looked like they’d just come running back from wherever to get there too. In the face of that kind of movement his statement seemed a little…lame. “Crying.”

“Isn’t she a woman?” Chris asked from the ground, “isn’t that what they do?”

Zoe was close enough to smile at him, arms crossed over her chest and a little snarl of disagreement cutting through the air. Apparently she objected to the notion that women were cry babies. 

“I mean real women,” Chris said. Then he shoved himself up and dusted his jeans off. 

Jensen was talking to Christian over by the picnic table, handing out orders (no doubt) before he looked around his pack and made a decision about which one of them was going to join them on their way back to his apartment.

\--

Jensen went all bristly and stiff in the hallway of his apartment and Chris kind of smirked about that. Jared looked over his shoulder at them instead of at the door while he was turning the knob and that’s why he wasn’t prepared to be dragged inside the apartment by the belt loop. Gen was pulling him by two fingers and let go after he was firmly in the middle of the living room. Jensen was right at his back and Chris closed the door behind them like it didn’t bother him at all. 

“Uh,” Jared mumbled. 

Eric, Sandy, Mike (when did he get to Texas), and Tom (or him), were all sitting in a semi-circle around a single chair. Gen shoved him at the chair and he took that as a not so subtle order for him to sit down. Jensen took other people ordering him around just about as well as he’d handled the condom aisle. 

Either that or he was honestly pissed to see Mike sitting there. Either way, he was pissed and it was burning out away from his skin in waves that made Jared have that insane urge to lick him again. Whatever the fuck was going on with his friends, he figured that licking Jensen in front of them would just make it worse. “Did I lose an invitation?” he asked.

Chris grabbed the ugly old chair that nobody ever sat in to drag over to add to the group and he flopped back into with a wide-white-toothy grin. Gen glanced at him and must have decided it wasn’t worth it to argue with him. “Ok,” she said, “obviously we were hoping that you’d come alone. That would have made this a lot easier—and I know you hate to be lied to so I’m sorry about the fake crying and all. I just didn’t figure I could get you away from your…friends…unless it was an emergency or something.” She walked over to her own chair and sat down with her knees together and her palms resting on them. 

Mike looked a little bit uncomfortable, flushed kind of pink and Tom was glaring at Jensen (which really wasn’t helping). Eric had that look on his face like he’d been betrayed or just didn’t understand what the fuck was going on. Sandy just looked worried and kept shooting glances at Chris and his flopped-back lazy-badass sort of way of lying in the chair. 

“First off,” Gen said, “this is a non-judging space.”

At that point Chris burst into a peel of laughter that jerked through his body and made him tip his head back and his chest shake. He had to lean forward again to suck in a breath and Jensen’s glare over Jared’s head at him shut him up with just a hiccup of a giggle and a crinkle of crows-feet at the corner of his eyes. “Sorry,” he said to them, “sorry.”

“A non-judging space for what?” Jared asked. He looked at all of them—the chairs, their earnest and concerned faces and— “Is this an intervention? Are you honest to God doing an intervention right now?”

“Jared, we love you,” Sandy said, “and we’re worried about you.”

“You haven’t been acting right,” Gen added, “and your friends are—well, no offense to them,” she wasn’t looking at either of them, “kind of cult-ish and scary. Mike flew in because he was worried about you, didn’t you Mike?”

Mike cleared his throat, “uh, we came to support him.”

“Worried,” Gen repeated. “So, I think now would be a good time for you to practice what you preach and tell us exactly what your quote, unquote friends are doing here.” 

Then they were all staring at him, right at him and not at Jensen who had gone so still it was unnerving. His hands were hanging at his sides, curled into loose fists and he felt like a fever just to the side of Jared’s right arm. He licked his lips and looked over at Chris who was still grinning like a fool. (Oh he had to be eating this shit up, the little bastard.) Then he tipped his head up and looked at Jensen who looked at him without even seeming to look at him. “They want the truth,” he said quietly. Jensen looked at them and made a face when he saw Mike but shrugged at him.

“Ok,” Jared said to Jensen and then slapped his hands against his lap and stood up. He kicked the chair back so it was against the couch. “Werewolves,” he said, “they’re werewolves. Jensen,” he reached out to touch his shoulder, “is my soul mate and he’s the pack alpha. They came back because an extremist group of ‘batshit crazies’ are hunting me down to torture me or dismember me or just kill me. I can’t stay here because it puts you in danger.”

He got three sets of blank stares and slow blinks. Mike rubbed the back of his neck and Tom was caught between grinning and looking uncomfortable.

Chris was biting his thumb with that stupid grin on his face while he watched them. His nose flared open as he drew in the scent of the room and he looked up at Jared. It was some great joke to him, really.

“Jared,” Gen said softly, “werewolves aren’t real.”

Yeah, they could argue that all damn day. Jared was going to start pointing out lore but Jensen tugged at the buttons on his jacket and shrugged it off his shoulders. He caught the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head, threw it on the floor behind him. The whole time he was clenching his teeth. “Jensen,” Jared said, “you don’t have to.”

“Let him,” Chris said. He stood up himself and pulled his T-shirt off, threw it on the chair. He kicked his shoes off, reached down to tug his socks off. 

Jensen was pushing his jeans off, shoes already kicked off, socks in little heaps. The girls were covering their eyes and making objections while Eric stared in kind of horror at the slowly stripping strangers. Once Jensen was naked he tipped his head back and closed his eyes. His body started to shake a little and then it cracked and got darker, fur was crawling out of his skin, his tail was extending from his spine and his fingers were shifting into paws. When he looked forward again he dropped to all fours as a wolf. Chris went wolf without any fuss, got short and crawled up to Jensen to lick his jaw, nudged at him with his snout like a nuzzle and after Jensen rubbed back against him wagged his tail. 

“Oh my God!” Gen shouted, “oh my _God_!”

“I told you,” Jared said. He sat down again, reached out a hand to get his fingers into Jensen’s fur and Jensen turned his head back to look at him. He turned around, hair all standing up in agitation and rested his head in his lap, snuffling in the smell of him and accepting the comfort of being petted without worrying what his friends must be thinking.

Mike was doing a terrible job of acting surprised but he did manage to look constipated. “Wait,” he said (far too calmly to have just found out werewolves were real), “do werewolves have dog dicks?”

Chris barked at him, snarled at the end and jumped up on his lap with his huge paws against Mike’s thighs. Tom frowned at that but Chris just slobbered on Mike’s face and hopped down again. He was circling around his friends—his _terrified_ friends, sniffing at them and wagging his tail as he took an extra circle around Sandy.

“It’s not going to hump my leg is it?” Sandy whispered.

“No,” Jared said, “he’s just an asshole.”

“You have a soul mate?” Eric repeated, “like, in the movies, your one and only true love soul mate?” 

“Yeah,” Jared said, “look—it was a hard time, I was eighteen, he was kind of a d—wolf. I told him that I didn’t want to see him again.”

“You whore!” Sandy said, “the whole time you’re bitching at me about how you don’t believe in soul mates or destiny or any of that shit and you _know for a fact_ that they’re real. You _whore_.” 

Chris was messing with Mike now, nipping at his ankles and his elbows and fingers. Mike kept squirming away from him and shoving at his head without looking really afraid of him. Tom looked around the stacks of papers by them until he found a newspaper and then he rolled it up and reached across Mike to swat Chris across the nose with it.

“Get lost,” Tom said.

Chris sat back, changed back into a human (a completely naked one) and winked at Tom. “Mikey, your girlfriend’s got balls. I like it.” Then he stood up and stepped past Sandy (still naked, of course) and grabbed his pants off the floor. He pulled them on and fell back into the chair. “Your girlfriend ain’t handling this shit well,” Chris said to him. 

“Why aren’t you freaking out about this?” Gen asked Mike, “did you know about this?”

“I always believed werewolves were real,” Mike said back, “and if anyone was going to be soul mated to one, Jared would be it. I mean—it makes sense right?” He had such a sincere look on his face while he half-lied to all of them. 

Sandy nodded and Gen rolled her eyes, “just because he writes horror about broken soul mates and apparently used to be an epic wolf geek doesn’t mean—well, ok, yeah I could see that.”

Eric got up and grabbed his coat off the back of the chair. He shoved past Chris toward the door. If they’d been alone he might have tried to stop him, maybe apologize, maybe explain—maybe anything—but he just let Eric go and leaned forward to rub his eyebrows with his thumb and fingers.

“Do werewolves have dog dicks?” Sandy asked. She was looking right at Chris when she said it (really, right at Chris’ crotch).

“No,” Chris said, “we have wolf dicks when we’re wolves. And before you get around to asking, Jared does not have sex with Jensen while he’s furry. Your boy is afraid of kink.”

Jared went red and quietly wished to disappear into a void created right out of the middle of his apartment floor. Jensen was growling now, all snarl in his chest and Jared absently scratched at him to calm him down. 

“This is going to look really bad. Don’t panic,” Chris said, a chair scraped across the floor. His jeans hit the floor with a thunk of his lighter on the wooden floor and Jared looked up to see him half-wolf and half-man and dropping down into a defensive and not quite submissive pose. 

Mike and Tom were pulling the girls back up against the balcony doors and Jared was right smack between the two werewolves. Jensen was moving away from him now, all anger and snarling with his hackles raised. 

“Damn it,” Jared said. He stood up and Chris barked at him which just got Jensen angrier, made him snarl louder at Chris for having the audacity to do something so stupid. “Stop.”

“Jared,” Mike said, “alpha wolves don’t really—”

Jensen was growling now, low and constant with his teeth bared at Chris. Chris was low to the ground, shoulders hunched and hackles raised like he was going to wolf-brawl right in the middle of Jared’s fucking living room. 

“Jesus,” Jared shouted, “Chris, roll over. You are not doing this here.” He didn’t expect to be obeyed at all so the way Chris looked at him and then laid down and rolled to show his belly was— He didn’t have a word to encompass it and he didn’t necessarily have any to follow it up when Jensen went over and accepted Chris’ show of submission with the grip of teeth around his neck and then a lick to follow it up. Jared grinned at the girls that were standing on chairs behind Mike and Tom. “They’re really just big puppies,” he said, “you know. Really sweet.”

Chris rolled onto his gut as a human, propped himself up on his elbows and looked up at him. “Your turn,” he said. He shoved himself up to his feet and grabbed his jeans again. “Take it to your room.” 

Jensen was pacing now, back and forth in front of him. His nails were clicking on the wood floors and he was building up to another long growl as he went back and forth in front of him. 

Jared grabbed Jensen’s clothes and threw them over his shoulder. “I’ll be right back. Chris—don’t scare anyone.”

“Please, who would I scare? Turn the music on real loud,” Chris said.

Jared went down the hall to his room and Jensen followed after him, through the door and onto the bed. As soon as the door swung shut, Jensen started changing back into a human. He didn’t look any happier with his human face than he’d sounded with his wolf snarl but it was—something.

“What the hell was that?” Jared asked, “don’t tell me it’ll pass, tell me what the fuck just happened.”

“That one you smelled like the first day,” Jensen said. He was close to him, all skin and the effort of not attacking him for his throat was like a shiver in his shoulders. “Chris talks too much. They were passing judgment on you.”

“What?” Jared whispered. “Calm down, come on—just calm down.” He touched Jensen and that must have been some kind of magical fucking floodgate because as soon as he slid his fingertips across his skin he was pulling and Jensen was crawling over him on the bed. They were kissing again—sloppy and messy just like before. Jensen’s thighs were spread across his and his sides were smooth skin all the way down.

Oh _Christ_ , Jared hadn’t even ever been this close to sex before in his life, hadn’t had a naked man in his lap and now he did and it was his soul mate and his whole body was just on _fire_. Jensen was moving over him, pushing his knees back, getting closer and Jared held onto his back, traced his ribs in toward his spine straight down to the dip of his back just before his ass and—

“What does this feel like for you?” Jared asked, “Jensen—talk to me.”

Jensen’s face was pressed against his neck, mouth pressed over his pulse and just sucking in breath and certainty that even after all this time, Jared was still all his. It was stupid, archaic and barbaric. Here he was a virgin sacrifice for the monster with two werewolves listening in and God—they could _smell_ him too. “You should feel it,” Jensen said. “Chris was right. It will get worse.” He didn’t move off but he didn’t try to kiss Jared again. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, this thing is making me crazy too.” Just like now, when he was laying on his back with Jensen over him and thinking silly-crazy thoughts about what it would feel like just to give in and…

“No,” Jensen said, “I’m sorry about before. Chris tried to tell me you didn’t really understand and I wouldn’t believe him.” He leaned in to press a kiss against his throat and touched the tip of his tongue to his skin before he pulled back. His clothes were in a pile at the end of the bed and he reached back for them. 

Jared caught his wrist, “I didn’t—I really didn’t mean to lead you on before. I’m sorry about that too.” He ran his thumb up the inside of his wrist and Jensen stared down at his hand before looking up at his face. 

“Ok,” Jensen said. He looked torn and then sighed. “We should not leave Chris alone with your friends.” 

\--

Gen wouldn’t go within three foot of Jensen or Chris but she was perfectly fine and at least a little bit in love with Mike. The irony of it hit him somewhere low in the belly and twisted where it wasn’t even funny so much as something he didn’t want to think about. (Then again, he hadn’t been happy about finding out either. Just, he couldn’t remember ever actually being afraid of them.) Sandy seemed to find Chris _especially_ interesting after he showed her his inner animal. 

Jensen tolerated them better now that Eric was gone and Jared was settled on the couch next to him waiting for the lunch that Mike and Gen were supposedly making in the kitchen for the past hour. 

“So, soul mates,” Sandy said, “like, you’re really soul mates and you can—does that come with some kind of special powers or something?” She looked at the two of them (and what a great pair they made for answering questions like that).

Jensen looked at him, “special powers?”

“She means like…uh…” Jared looked over at Chris. He had discovered the books that Jared kept hiding under the coffee table and was halfway through his first one. “Chris, explain special powers.”

“Soul mates share a soul,” he said without lowering the book, “when you find your soul mate you are instantly in love with them, some mates have been known to be aware of their future mate for years before they actually meet. That’d be Jared and his slight wolf obsession, since he probably didn’t see Jensen when he was a toddler, he is especially sensitive to his own soul. That happens, it sucks. People like me? We’re the ones that the elders say don’t even have souls because we can’t feel them.” He turned a page and then folded down the corner of it and set the book in his lap. “Special powers? Probably not what you’re thinking. They are drawn together, they love one another, they have a better awareness of the other’s emotions. If one of them gets hurt—the other one knows. Basic soul mate shit. Oh and if Jared becomes a werewolf, Jensen will turn into the incredible Hulk of werewolves.” 

“I didn’t know you loved wolves,” Sandy said, “you _hate_ werewolf movies. You ranted for like two weeks about Underworld when we watched it that one time. You asshole.” She was far too amused by the whole thing and not nearly scared enough.

Mike came out of the kitchen with a platter and set it on the coffee table. “Jared’s always been very fickle about what werewolf lore he accepts. Besides that movie sucks.” He went back to the kitchen and slapped Chris when he reached out and pinched him on the leg.

“Stop,” Jared said.

Chris mouthed O-meg-a at him and then grinned. 

“I hate you,” Sandy said to him, “look at him. Just look at him. If you were going to go off and have a soul mate you could have had the decency to have an ugly soul mate.” She scoffed at him. Then turned to look at Chris who was just pink with amusement. “Do humans have soul mates? I mean like—Jared has one, do we all have one?”

Chris shrugged, “like I said, some people can’t feel their souls so you wouldn’t know even if you did. People like them,” he waved at him and Jensen, “not the fairy tale you’re thinking of—especially not where we come from.” 

“Lunch,” Mike called. Tom was following after him with paper plates and Gen managed to overcome her anxiety to join them. They talked about Mike and Tom and jobs and the future and the story that Jared had submitted to a literary magazine for consideration and how he figured it probably wouldn’t get published.

Jensen stayed quiet next to him but he was calm and his contentment was like a drug that kept all of the questions and objections and anger and confusion and hurt behind a door with the lock turned. For a few hours—at last—he thought that he might be something besides a freak and having Jensen just might not ruin his entire life.

\--

They left after lunch and Chris turned back to look at the closed door with his tongue across his lips and a wag of his imaginary tail. “I like Sandy. I’m going to fuck her.” He smiled when he said it and went patting around his jeans for his cigarettes. “Just you know—fair warning.”

Mike and Tom were ahead of them, close and leading the way to their rented car. (Jared liked cars, he liked them a lot better than a public bus and walking for miles.) Tom drove them back to the campsite where all the wolves were lounging around half in human form and half as wolves. Zoe and Erica looked like they’d just finished fucking and Aldis and Christian were wrestling around as giant wolves with all the casual non-concern for being found at a human campsite of idiots.

“Mike,” Milo said. He tossed the book he’d been flipping through at Chris’ sleeping bag and got up from the picnic table to hug him. Mike stood stock still and looked worried but managed to pat Milo on the back anyway. “Hey Tom,” Milo said.

Tom nodded back at him.

Mike stood still while the rest of them swarmed around him, Zoe and Erica like a pair of sharks, Aldis and Christian sniffing at him with their giant wolf noses and Steve waved from where he was laying in a patch of sun with old and broken sunglasses over his eyes. 

“Why do you look scared?” Jared asked him. Tom was staying close to Mike and looked ready to shed blood to defend him. “Are they going to do something to you?”

“Wolves usually kill intruders,” Mike said, “I got kicked out.”

“He’s a little omega bitch now,” Chris said, “we can do whatever we want to him.” He knocked into Milo as he passed him and said something too low to be heard clearly but it sounded like it had to do with his books. 

“Mike,” Milo said, “we’re not going to hurt you.” Christian was knocking his big head against Milo’s thigh and reaching up to nip at his fingertips. “You should come run with us.”

“I don’t really…” Mike said.

“It’s the full moon soon,” Zoe cut in, “you’re safe with us. If your mate lets you—you should come with us.”

Mike shook his head, “no I really don’t do that anymore. At all, for like years.” He shrugged his shoulders and Christian barked at him and then circled around Milo and knocked him backward toward the woods. “I think he wants you to go with him.”

“I think it’s important he knows he doesn’t always get what he wants,” Milo said back. He knocked his knee against Christian’s snout and Aldis joined in the circling, ducking his head down to nip at Milo’s legs and then up to bite the pockets of his jeans. 

“Go,” Jensen said, “keep a perimeter.” He waved his hand and they looked oddly reluctant to go. “All of you, go.” 

“Someone should stay,” Zoe said quietly, “if someone—”

“You’ll be close,” Jensen said. 

For a second the pack looked uncertain and then the ones of them that were still in human shape started stripping off their clothes. They tossed them in a pile by the tent and headed for the tree line. Christian and Aldis followed Milo like happy puppies, tongues hanging out and barking to goad him on. 

Once they were all gone, Mike and Tom and him and Jensen were left in the sudden silence of the picture-perfect campground. Jensen looked at Mike, “they won’t hurt you. You’re safe here.”

“Thanks,” Mike said, “sorry about the intervention—we tried to convince them it was dumb.” He said it to Jensen and not to him and Jensen shrugged it off like it didn’t matter. When he walked away, toward the bottles of water that were stacked by the tent, Mike sighed. When he looked at Jared it was four years ago when he stood at the side and helplessly stared at Jensen pinning him to the floor. Like he had no choices and no ability to fight back--it was a pitiful look on Mike’s face. “The pack we came from used to hold councils, the alpha--it wasn’t... It was terrible. You stood alone in a circle of your family to be judged and whatever the alpha decided--they had to stay and watch.”

It was a strange feeling, hating someone that he’d never met. “He sounds like a charming guy.” He nodded back at Jensen, “I’m going to go...something.”

Tom nodded and Mike half smiled at it. “We’ll go--for a walk or something.” They turned together and headed out toward the path that went past all the other empty campsites toward the big community bathroom.


	9. (cut you down) 4

Jared had always (always) been a bit of an idiot about a lot of things. Hell, he’d been a grade schooler staring at his father like an idiot for trying to explain to him why a little boy couldn’t go out on Halloween dressed up like a little girl. It had made sense to him in that vague and kind of shadowy way that a lot of rules of society made sense to him. There was blah-blah-blah and ‘because I said so’ at the back of it. His father hadn’t given a damn one way or another if he liked dick or not but he still would have sat him down and told him that he couldn’t put on a skirt and a red cape for Halloween. 

Society made no sense to him, half the time and he’d grown up in it. He’d be raised with the rules, he’d been immersed in the common language and he understood everything about his side of an argument that spanned two entirely different cultures. He couldn’t imagine what Jensen had to feel like, thrown out of the only world he knew and suddenly finding himself having to learn rules that had to seem pointless and baseless and arbitrary even to Jared.

Hell, when he’d still loved wolves one of the things he’d loved best about them was how they knew how to survive in the wild. How their rules made sense because they kept them alive—how everything they did was specifically built around survival of themselves and their species. Jensen was a living, breathing, English-speaking example of a creature that had been brought up learning to kill to keep itself alive. 

Jared sat on the picnic table and watched Jensen moving around the campsite. There was nothing to do now, nothing but waiting and listening to the sun setting and the animals in the forest moving around. There were bugs buzzing around again, Jared was going to make them a pretty good feast with his short sleeves (animals were just trying to survive). He picked at the dirt under his fingernails and then sighed. “Jensen.”

Jensen looked back at him. In the dim light his eyes reflected and made him look unnatural and uncomfortable in human skin. He came across the campsite to stand by him, just beyond the reach of his fingertips. His silence was agitated and hurting. Jared could feel that in his own chest and he wondered how much his own anger and confusion and hurt bothered Jensen. 

“Talk to me,” Jared said. He dusted the picnic table off next to where he was sitting and patted it with his hand so Jensen would sit there. It took a minute—longer than it would have with anyone else—but Jensen moved and sat there with him, feet on the bench and shoulder rubbing against his. “Tell me about when you were a puppy—how’d you meet Christian?” 

“His father was one of the most loyal to my father.” Jensen paused and leaned forward like him, watched the tree line and after a moment relaxed again. “I spent most of my time as a wolf—I wasn’t my father’s first son. He had killed the one before me and he wouldn’t allow me to shift into my human form for years. Christian was allowed to—play with me as long as we remained wolves. We wrestled and ran together.”

“Was your brother sick?” Jared asked. “I mean, animals do that, don’t they?”

Jensen shrugged. “The alpha didn’t tolerate weakness. If his own son showed it, he would have killed him rather than admit that he’d fathered a disgrace. His rule was absolute. His laws were inflexible.” He stared at his hands and drew in a breath and let it out again. “He spared my life only because my mother demanded it.”

“I’m sorry,” Jared whispered. He put a hand on Jensen’s shoulder, felt the flicker of tight muscle under his palm and then slid it across his back to hug him in tighter to his side. It was instinct in his chest when he leaned in and pressed a kiss against Jensen’s neck and nuzzled at him. 

“Under my father’s law, it is my right to claim you. I could have— _should_ have turned you at the first full moon after I saw you. As the alpha’s heir I would have brought you before a council circle and claimed you as mine in front of the pack.” His voice was lower in his throat; his words were cold and spoken without feeling. “After you were turned, they would have challenged you, made you prove that you deserved to be mine and if you could not defeat them—they would have eaten you in front of me.”

Jared closed his eyes, felt his fingers tighten in the back of Jensen’s shirt and kept his silence when the hate for a man he’d never met broiled up so high in his throat it was like a physical pain. 

“My mother was not the alpha’s soul mate.” Jensen stared down at the ground. He tipped his head to the side, pressed his cheek against the top of Jared’s head.

“Did you ever think about just biting me?” Jared asked, “ever think it would be easier?”

Jensen shook his head, “Chris says that you and I feel too much of our souls. You loved wolves as a child and long before I ever met you, you were the thing that kept some part of me human. Even if I had thought of biting you, I would never have been able to do it if you resisted.”

Jared sighed and straightened up again. “We are seriously fucked up, Jensen. You more than me, but still seriously fucked up.” 

“It’s not so bad,” Jensen said, “you don’t hate me anymore.”

It wasn’t funny at all. Nothing was funny in the aftermath of Jensen’s childhood and the naked facts laying there. It wasn’t funny because Jensen sounded so fragile saying it, like he wasn’t sure and like it’d hurt more than there were words for when Jared had sent him away and called him an animal. So it wasn’t funny and Jared didn’t laugh because it was but because if he didn’t laugh he probably would have started crying. “No,” he said, “I don’t. I never did.”

Jensen smiled at him. Honest to God, little wrinkles at the edges of his eyes, bright but shyly smiled at him. 

“Thanks for not…biting me and fucking me in front of your pack, Jensen.” Then he got up because it felt like if he didn’t move he was going to lean over and kiss Jensen. He wanted to but they were alone and they were being hunted and he didn’t think he could stop if he started. “So, how about we talk about something happier? How’d you learn to play video games?”

“Erica brought the game over when she joined us. I never left the house without the others, I didn’t understand most of what humans talked about or why they stared at me. I was bored and she showed me how to play it one day.”

“So you’re telling me that my soul mate is a closet video game nerd werewolf?” Jared said. “What’s your favorite game?”

“I like car games,” Jensen said. “Why are you moving away from me?”

Jared was three feet from the picnic table, shifting on his feet with a guilty conscience. “Because I want to kiss you. I know that sounds really bad but I don’t think I’d stop with a kiss and I don’t want to do that here.” Then, “if we have sex is that—I mean, is that it? Are we stuck forever?”

“We aren’t ‘stuck’ forever until you’re a werewolf,” Jensen said. “Humans very rarely even recognize their soul mates.”

“Do you want me to be a werewolf?” Jared asked.

Maybe if Jensen was human he’d know to lie but he wasn’t and he just nodded his head. “Yes, I do. But it’s your decision.”

“I’m going to go lay down,” Jared said, “you can come in if you want. Just you know—with your clothes on.” He smiled and Jensen nodded and stayed right where he was. “Hey,” he said when he got to the mesh door of the tent, “if you trade out with someone, let me know?”

“I won’t be ‘trading out’,” Jensen said. He leaned back to lay across the table as Jared ducked into the tent.

\--

The first howl was a shattering, heart-broken sound. It sounded like it was beating against the edges of the tent and had to be miles away from him. He dropped the laptop to the side and shoved himself up to his feet but Jensen was already there, shifting from human to wolf and blocking his way out. “Hey, hey!” he shouted at the wolf, “what are you…” The claws shredding through the mesh door cut off his question and he was smart enough to roll back to the side and grab his shoes before he was dragged out of the tent by the collar. Jensen let go of him when he was on his feet and Jared didn’t waste time demanding answers.

The second howl was a curious sound and closer. Jensen led him through the underbrush and the trees until the sticks and rocks and poking things were tearing holes in his socks. “Hey,” he said. He stopped and dropped his shoes to shove his feet into them. 

Steve found them first, broader and bigger and meaner looking than Jared remembered. He barked at Jensen and then seemed confused by Jared standing there before Jensen barked back at him and Steve took off again. Jensen pulled him by the pants pocket to get him moving again—down through the forest, in toward the little stream they must have been splashing in. He shoved and pushed and prodded at him through the water and out the other side. There was a fallen tree there and Jensen climbed up on it and tipped his head back to howl.

The sound was loud enough to make his ears ache and ring and the answering howls came from all sides all around them. Jensen paced back and forth on the fallen tree for a minute.

To the left, a body broke through the underbrush and skidded to a stop in front of him. Erica was just as slim and sleek as she had been four years ago but she looked at him and then shifted back to human form. (Completely naked human form.) “Tom’s been kidnapped. We found Mike, they shot him and he’s—”

“Tom?” Jared repeated.

“Jensen,” Erica said and put her hand up to hush him, “Mike won’t change and we can’t move him. Chris and Christian are tracking the scent and Milo and Aldis are watching him but we can’t get him to move—Zoe’s trying to—”

Jensen barked at her, cut off her words and then jumped off the log and landed in a run. He was gone before Jared even had enough time to turn and look at him. They were standing there in awkward silence with Erica wiping tears away from her eyes. 

“Where’s Mike?” Jared demanded, “take me to Mike.”

Erica licked her lips and looked back through the forest at where Jensen had gone. “You were a wolf geek?” she said quietly, “like a wikipedia page editing super geek? Like you’d know that alpha wolves only mate with other alpha wolves and if you were my alpha’s mate I’d have to follow your orders?” 

“I’m a human, like you were a human and Mike is my friend.” He wanted to strangle her for her stupid rules and she didn’t even looked worried about him. He was just a human—taller and stronger than her if she were just a human but she was a werewolf with teeth and strength and unafraid of him. “Yes,” he said, “I know about that, yes I’m his mate, now take me to Mike.”

It shouldn’t have worked but she was shifting back into a wolf and whining at him as she trotted off the same way that Jensen had gone. He followed close behind her as the sky got darker-and-darker and the woods around them got denser and harder to recognize.

\--

Mike was leaning back against a tree with Zoe’s prim hand pressed against his side. His shirt was wadded up to catch the blood and the smell of it was strong enough even Jared could recognize it. The other wolves were stationed around like a perimeter, Milo and Steve and Aldis in a constantly shifting circle while Zoe tried to talk sense to Mike.

“You’ll die,” she said, “you idiot, you’ll _die_.” 

Erica barked when they broke through into the tiny clearing and the others looked at him and then snarled at her. “Hey,” Jared said, “shut up. I told her to bring me here.” 

Mike looked at him; Mike was pale and wincing and shaking his head. “Look at you,” he mumbled, “throwing your rank around like that. They’ll make a wolf out of you, after all.”

Zoe turned to look over her shoulder at him. “Just make sure you throw that rank at your _mate_ when he decides to punish mine.” She was naked too, on her knees in the sticks and brambles and she tipped her head to pull the bunched shirt away from Mike’s side and he hissed again.

“God damn,” Mike said. He turned his head away from the sight of his own mangled flank and looked out at the wolves. His tongue was dry against his lips and his whole body jerked when Zoe pressed the wadded compress back up against his side hard.

Jared hit the dirt on his knees, traced the lines of blood that soaked down into his pants and across his belly all the way back to the source. Zoe was staring at him, uneasy and distrustful. “How bad is it?”

“If he doesn’t change, he’ll die,” Zoe said. “You talk to him; maybe idiots have their own language.” Then she caught his hand and yanked it over to press down against the compress. It oozed under his hand and it was all he could do not to shriek like a little kid and start puking. (He never had learned to deal with blood gracefully.) Zoe was a wolf again and moving out to circle with the others while Erica stayed next to him. 

“You should watch your back around her,” Mike said, “she always wanted to be alpha and she’s a mean bitch in a fight.” He coughed and groaned and gritted his teeth against the pain. “Where’s Jensen?”

“Looking for Tom. Change,” Jared said, “and don’t give me any of that shit about how you don’t do that anymore. Don’t you dare--” He pushed in hard with the compress and felt the squish of blood against his palm. He touched Mike’s skin and found it cold—Mike had never been cold, none of them were ever cold. 

“It’s not that bad,” Mike swallowed back against something and then looked at him. He closed his eyes, just squeezed them shut and then nodded his head. The moon caught his eyes when they opened again, made them reflect (and they’d stopped doing that months ago, according to Tom). His skin flushed pink and then darkened and his body started shivering and snapped like breaking bones. The other wolves tightened their circle around them and Mike shouted something that came out as a howl just as mournful and hurting as the very first one.

Jared moved back and stood up and Mike rolled onto his side as a wolf—for the first time in _years_. Erica licked at the blood on his fur, her tongue lapping over the wound again and again until Milo left the others to come and join in. He pulled back to nip at Jared’s fingertips like it meant something. So he knelt down there with them and pulled the fur away from the wound and they lapped across the jagged edges of it while Mike whined pitifully. 

“It’ll be alright,” Jared said. He scratched his fingers through Mike’s fur, “they got you. They’ll find Tom.” (He prayed to whatever deity looked after werewolves and their mates that he didn’t turn out to be a liar.)

\--

It was an hour later—at least, maybe more—when the others came back. Chris and Christian were filthy and Jensen was furious, broke through the constantly circling wolves with a snarl and a growl. He went straight for Erica—still curled up against Mike and occasionally pressing slow, sure licks across the no longer bleeding wound on his side. 

“Hey,” Jared said and shoved himself away from the tree he’d been sitting back against. He pushed his hands against Jensen’s shoulders and shoved at him and only ended up pushing himself back and making an already mad wolf even more furious. “I told her to bring me here. I’m your mate and she did what I told her to do—that’s how it works.”

Jensen changed back, all shudder-snap-and-shiver and reached forward to shove him backward. He didn’t follow him down, just frowned at him from where he was half crouching on the ground. “It doesn’t work that way when your life is in danger. Why can’t you just obey me for once?”

“Because I’m not your fucking subordinate,” Jared said. “Where’s Tom? Did the batshit crazies take him?”

Mike lifted his head up from the leaves at the mention of Tom and whined to echo Jared’s question. The wolves all came in close and watched Jensen as he looked over at Mike. It had all the heavy weight of something more significant than Jared could wrap his little human mind around. Mike was hurt and he wasn’t part of the pack anymore (not really) and they were all waiting on a judgment that only Jensen had the right to pass. If they went after Tom they could all die and—

“Jensen,” Jared said.

“Yes,” Jensen said, “they did. We have their scent now.” Then he stretched out again, trading hands for paws and skin for fur and stepped over Erica’s still and submissive body to nose at the healing wound on Mike’s side. He licked at it while the other wolves cocked their heads and looked (as far as he could tell) completely confused. 

Mike whined again and thumped his tail in the dirty underbrush before he laid his head back down and closed his eyes. 

\--

Chris moved Mike, through the trees that seemed to be endless in every direction, picking their way back to the campsite. The others were wolves, spread out and moving in a pattern, pausing and sniffing and continuing forward again. Chris stayed by him, carrying a wolf almost as big as he was tall and never seemed to notice the strain of it even as sweat pearled up on his temples and rolled down his neck. “We’re stronger at the full moon,” Chris said into the silence.

Jared didn’t say anything to that. He followed them, dead center of the whole pack, and when they finally broke through the last of the trees, the campsite was destroyed. The tent had been torn apart, the picnic table had been turned over, his laptop had been pulled apart, Chris’ books were in shreds and the rented car had all its windows smashed in and the tires slashed. His duffel bag was gutted on the upside down table but all of his clothes looked like they were still there. The wolves spread out and sniffed at everything that had been disturbed before they came back to form a tight knot around him and whined after Jensen digging his nose through Jared’s clothes on the table. 

“You did good Mikey,” Chris said. He set him down on the ground by the ruined tent and dug under it until he found his sleeping bag and yanked the zipper down to catch a picture that had been tucked inside it. He smoothed his thumb over it and then tucked it back into the old bag and rolled the whole thing up into a ball. “Fuckers knew exactly where we were.”

Jensen barked.

Chris looked back at him and then grimaced and rolled his eyes. “Yeah,” he said to Jensen. “Of course they destroyed the fucking car.” He pointed a hand at it. He bent over and went looking for his clothes. Once he found them he pulled them on and found a shirt and his bag and started throwing stuff into it. “Repack your bag,” Chris said, “get their clothes.”

“What?” Jared asked, “what the fuck are we doing?”

“Your adorable roommates, Jared,” Chris said. He stood up straight and slipped the bag onto his back. “Unless you want them to see all of us naked.” Then he reached down to pick up Mike again. 

“What about Tom?” Jared demanded (that old edge of hysteria closing in from the side). “How the hell are we supposed to get all the way back to the city in the middle of the fucking night? With no car!”

Chris sneered at him. “We’re going to walk Jared. Tom’s not going to go anywhere over night and we’ll get ourselves killed trying to run him down and rescue him on no sleep.”

“So you’re just going to leave him there? You’re just going to let the batshit crazies do whatever they want to him until you feel like going after him?” Mike was whining as a punctuation to Jared’s shouting. The other wolves were keeping their circle around them and making no noise and casting no glances at the human and his stupid little temper tantrum.

“Yes,” Chris said, “pretty much--exactly, yes.”

Jared threw the bag at him, moved to hit him or just shove him or maybe tackle him to the ground like he stood a chance. Jensen got between them, all wolf and snarled at Chris before shoving Jared back. “You’re an asshole!”

Chris chuckled, dark and low. “I told you.” He picked up the bag Jared had thrown at him and threw it back. “Get your head out of your ass.”

Jared shoved his stuff into the bag and accepted the clothes the wolves brought to him to shove into the bag with his. Jensen hovered right at his side while he worked and then barked at him to hurry up when he was trying to make the broken zipper go up. “Stop it,” he said. Jensen bared his teeth at him. 

They headed back into the forest, his shoes cracking sticks as they went and the wolves moving almost soundlessly.

\--

He’d never dealt well with anxiety. Never—not ever—and there was Mike, still unconscious. There they were, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the woods, running from hunters with guns. He didn’t have his phone and he didn’t know if the girls were alright and he didn’t have any idea what time it was and he felt odd and conspicuous and tall surrounded by four legged creatures and Chris.

“Talk,” Jared said.

“You’re a fickle little human aren’t you? First it’s shut up and now it’s talk.”

“Just talk,” Jared said.

Chris rolled his eyes at him. He shifted the way he was carrying Mike and made him whine again before settling in place. “Alright, about what?” His lighter was a bulge in his side pocket and the way he kept fidgeting like he wanted to get his hands on it meant he probably wanted a smoke (and would have to wait). 

“I don’t know, something,” Jared said.

“Ok—how about, how Milo and Christian met. It’s their favorite story ever and since they’re preoccupied I might be able to get the whole thing out. So—most wolves with the average knowledge of their souls,” his words were punctuated by breaths and grunts of effort and the oddball hiss when something very sharp dug into his foot. “don’t recognize their soul mates until about puberty. Some of the elders think it’s because that’s when your wild spirit starts to settle down and you’re more aware and whatever and bullshit like that. I think it’s because soul mates consummate with sex and you don’t start wanting to fuck until puberty.” 

Jensen knocked into his thigh and Jared reached down to scratch a hand through his fur absently. He’d been doing that while they walked, staying close and demanding contact and Jared knew (or thought he knew) it was because the touch calmed him down. He would have been a sobbing, shaking, wreck of a man if Jensen wasn’t there. (Of course, if Jensen wasn’t there he wouldn’t be doing this again.) 

“Christian and Milo have known each other since they were pups. Christian got shipped off to keep the alpha puppy company most of his early childhood but him and Milo’s moms were in the same hunting group or some shit like that—they knew one another. Everyone knows that these two guys don’t even kind of like one another. Christian picked on Milo all the time, called him names because of the crooked lip thing and his floppy hair and anything else he could think of. Milo—in case you haven’t noticed—is a very sneaky bastard. He’s also a skinny bastard. Nobody thought this bony little kid had a backbone at all. So Christian comes up one day, starts picking on him and Milo must have just had it, he jumps on him and starts just beating his face in. Christian goes wolf and Milo follows right after him, snarling and growling and shredding all of Christian’s masculinity all at once.”

Jared snorted at that.

“He gets Christian belly up and goes for his throat. Christian’s never the same after that—I mean, completely different animal. A couple years later, Christian’s gone through puberty and he’s starting to get muscles and lose that reputation of being some loser a kid like Milo took down. Milo’s still stick-thin skinny and a mean fucker. Christian goes stock still, right in front of everyone and just stares at Milo. I mean, just _stares_. Then he goes after him.”

Chris shifted Mike again and stopped for a minute to catch his breath. He let out a long sigh before he continued on. “Everyone figures it’s just payback for how little Milo kicked his ass years ago. So they’re doing their mating thing right there in the middle of everything and nobody notices or cares. Neither of them are a chick so that fuck me smell isn’t even there. One of them—I put my money on Milo—gets their shit together long enough to realize that everyone is watching and they break it up long enough to run into the woods. Where they finish the fight and fuck and lock their eternal souls together for all time.” Chris was grinning when he looked over at him, “they won’t tell me who won the top. I still put my money on Milo. Never underestimate the skinny mean bitches.”

“So how’d they get found out?” Jared asked.

“That motherfucker,” Chris said, “the alpha there, had a rule about every bitch having to be mated. So if you don’t find your soul mate by the time you’re eighteen or so you have to fuck whoever’s available. Thing is, and I’m sure you know this—once you’ve found your mate, unless they die, you can’t even get it up for anyone else. Christian and Milo managed to avoid that for a few extra years but not too long.”

Jensen licked his fingers and then barked to the side at the others that were spread out farther. They barked back and Chris paused for a minute to catch his breath again.

“They’re going to need their clothes,” Chris said.

\--

It was breaking dawn by the time they reached the part of the city where Jared lived. He was exhausted and the wolves were barely dressed and casting suspicious glares at everyone that they passed. Mike had woken up and was limping along in the middle of the crowd with Jensen and Jared. Jensen stayed as a wolf and he stayed almost plastered against Jared’s side.

When they got to the front door of his apartment they all sniffed at the air and then nodded at him to open it up. He had to stop to pound on the door and wake Sandy up. She answered the door in a big T-shirt and tiny shorts with her hair in knots and her face all twisted up in concern. “Oh my God,” she whispered as soon as she saw him, “are you okay?”

“No,” Jared said. 

In the light he could see Mike’s blood on his hands, smeared on his shirt and dried there in streaks. Zoe had it in drying streaks up to her elbows and Mike whined as he padded over to a clear spot and just collapsed down on his side. Jensen followed after him and nosed into his hair to lick at the wound again. The pack came in behind him and closed the door.

Chris flopped back onto the chair while the rest of them dropped their clothes and changed back into wolves. They all crowded in around Mike and lay in curls around him. Jensen moved out of the middle of them to come back over to him. “The licking thing helps Mike heal,” Chris said, “in case you were curious. They’re going to sleep so we can go hunting tonight.”

“Hunting?” Sandy repeated, “Mike? Mike’s a werewolf?”

Jared thought that a smarter man would have burst into tears but he was too damn tired to bother. “Sandy,” he said and didn’t even recognize his own voice. “They took Tom. They took Tom and Mike’s been shot and we thought something could have happened to you and—”

“Hey,” Sandy said, “hey—Jared.” She went to touch him and Jensen snarled at her, shoved his body between them and knocked Jared back a few steps. “Sorry,” Sandy said to him, “I was just going to hug him.” Then she looked at his face. “What can I do?”

“What’s going on?” Gen asked from the doorway. She looked at the wolves and then him and back at Jensen with his hackles rising up. “Did something happen?”

“I’ll handle the explanations,” Chris said, “go take care of your girlfriend. Shower, sleep and that kind of shit.” He was digging into his pockets for his cigarettes and used his foot to kick against Jared’s ass to make him move. “Go on, before you fall over.” Once he had a cigarette he got up out of the chair and headed toward the kitchen with Sandy following after him.

Gen stayed in the doorway to the hallway until he got there and looked up at him. She didn’t try to touch him and Jensen didn’t snarl at her but she looked so sad about it. “You look like shit, Jay.”

“I feel worse than I look,” he said. Then he went past her and into the bathroom. His clothes were stiff when he dragged them off and the water was cold against his skin and then too hot. Jensen pulled the door open—stood there as a human with dirt stuck to his skin like it had been stuck to his fur. He stepped into the tiny little space that wasn’t nearly fucking big enough for them both. 

Jared was going to ask him what he wanted but Jensen wrapped his arms around him and the instant, overwhelming sense of comfort the touch brought barely had anything to do with soul mates. He put his arms around Jensen and held onto him in a tight squeeze while the water ran across his back. He ducked his head and Jensen’s hand slid down his back.

“We will get Tom back,” Jensen promised him. The rest that followed that, the blood they’d spill in the process—that didn’t matter, it didn’t matter at all just then. Jared just nodded his head and kept his arms around Jensen as long as he could.

\--

When he woke up Jensen was wearing his boxers and one of his T-shirts that he must have pillaged out of his closet. He was sitting on the edge of the mattress holding his family picture in the frame with no glass. He’d busted the glass out of it almost as soon as he bought it. “This is your family,” Jensen said. He didn’t even look back to make sure Jared was actually awake before he spoke.

“Yeah,” Jared whispered. He scooted to the end of the bed. The whole, huge and terrifying mess was waiting for him outside that door but right here with his elbow nudging against Jensen’s it was too small of a space to fit it all. “My Dad’s a teacher—he’s cool. My Mom works at a bakery and she’s always making cookies. I swear, my whole childhood was about making cookies. They’re cool,” he said and looked at Jensen’s face as he stared at them. “They’d probably like you.” 

Jensen smiled again, just a little and then set the picture back up on his desk.

\--

The living room was a mass of fur. The wolves were all awake and Sandy was dropping open bowls of reheated leftovers for them to eat out of. Gen brought them bowls of water and seemed less spooked by them than she had been the day before. When she saw him she smiled and waded through the animals to get to him. “Thank God, a human!” She hugged him and Jensen at his side just watched without snarling. “And a human-looking person,” she added and hugged Jensen. “Chris knocked out as a wolf and ever since then it’s been nothing but giant dogs. I didn’t think they’d want to eat like that but—they kept barking at the fridge.”

“They have better hearing and stuff as wolves,” Jared said and nodded. “We should go.” He looked over toward the balcony to see the strained gray light of the evening coming in. Sandy dropped the last bowl between Christian and Milo and then came over to stand by them. “We’re leaving,” Jared said, “you know, after they finish that and he eats.”

“I ate,” Jensen said, “you should eat.” 

“I can make you something,” Gen said. She looked a little whiter than normal behind her strained and worried smile. Sandy looked older than she had before and it wasn’t in her face or even skin-deep but how he must have looked the day before and after he found out about them.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Jensen said, “he can make his own food.” His tone was tight and curled and just mean. The girls pulled away from him and Jared stared at Jensen until he cleared his throat. “Mate thing,” he said.

“Are you shitting me?” Jared said, “Tom is off being tortured and you’re growling at my friends about how makes my food?” (And he was shouting at Jensen about growling at his friends about who made his food so really--pot calling the kettle black.) “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Do you know where Tom is?”

“You’re not going,” Jensen said.

“Fuck you I am too.” He moved through the wolves that stepped out of the way for him and didn’t even stop to think about how that would have been strange to him yesterday or even this morning. They’d always been nice to him but they’d never been deferential to him. 

“It’s dangerous,” Jensen said, “it’s dangerous and it’s stupid to bring you. We don’t even know what we’ll find there—if they’ve taken other humans, what they’ve done to Tom.”

Mike lifted his head up to whine at that and Erica licked his snout and nudged him away from the conversation like a mother gently correcting a child. Mike let himself be pushed back toward the food.

“I’m going Jensen,” Jared said, “you think I’ll be safer here? You think I’ll be safer anywhere? These stupid son of a bitches came after _me_ and they got Tom. You’re not leaving me behind.”

Jensen snarled at him. “You don’t want to be there,” he said. 

“No,” Jared agreed. He looked right at him, stared at his human skin that covered his animal skin. He remembered that night like a nightmare, he remembered them moving like monsters and he knew that they were going back. He knew they were going to kill them all—he knew it as surely as he knew anything— 

(He wondered if Tom knew when he came to save him four years ago. Tom must have known what was going to happen then.)

“I’m going,” Jared said again.

Gen cleared her throat across the room, “you can take my car if you need to.”


	10. (cut you down) 5

The very last thing that Jared wanted to do was take Gen’s car when they were heading out to kill people. Either she didn’t realize that was what they were doing or she was very carefully avoiding acknowledging it. He didn’t want to take the car but there really weren’t a whole lot of options so he ended up smashed into her tiny little Toyota with Mike all but shaking with nerves right next to him. 

“Relax,” Jared said, “please—you’re shaking the car.”

(Four years ago he’d wondered how the hell Tom had kept his cool in a situation that was just about Jared’s summation of hell. Now he thought he understood.)

“Sorry,” Mike said. He was almost entirely healed now, nothing left but the puffy scar on his skin just like it had been on Chris’ before. He protected that side but he was otherwise as good as he had been. “You know, you've been really good for Jensen. I mean, I think soul mates are shit and that everyone wants to romanticize it. I like having a choice—even when I want to kill Tom.”

“Is this really the right time for this?” Jared asked. The windows were rolled down so Mike could follow the scent of the wolves (which only half made sense to him since he had GPS and an approximate address but he wasn’t about to argue that with Jensen when Tom needed to be saved).

“Shut up,” Mike said, “let me talk? I need to talk—I’m going to talk or I’m going to lose my mind thinking about what the hell they’re doing to my boyfriend and if I start doing that I’m going to start thinking about how I’m going to rip out their throats and drink their blood while it’s still hot and gushing.”

Jared cleared his throat and nodded, “so, I've been really good for Jensen?”

Mike turned his head back toward the window. “Yeah, I mean—and this sounds bad, I know, but I’m not sorry that I brought you back to the pack house. I mean, that all turned out terrible, and it was awful and we ruined your life and all. I’m sorry about that. I’m not sorry because Jensen needed you. You—you could have made it. He couldn’t have and that’s why I did it.”

“How noble,” Jared said. He watched the arrow on the GPS pointing him down a road that he was pretty sure led to nowhere. Mike didn’t tell him that he was losing the trail so he kept going where the GPS led him. “So you’re telling me that instead of telling me that Jensen needed my help, you threw me at him. I could have made him worse—he could have made me worse.”

Mike scoffed at that. “You need to pull over here.” He pointed off to the side of the road where there was nothing but a bit of scuff and trees and blackness. “They’re all right there waiting.” His smile was all twisted at the sides, “I did miss seeing this well at night. You know when you don’t change you start losing all your senses? How do you humans live?” As soon as the car stopped he was shoving his way out of it and throwing his clothes back in through the open door. 

Jared slammed his door and pocketed the key before going over to shut Mike’s door. The wolves were already swarming together in a circle. He pushed his hands into his pockets and cleared his throat. “Human over here.”

When they’d finished rubbing all together and discussing whatever the fuck with Mike, Christian shifted back into a human crouching over by the group. “It’s across this field. You’re going to open the door and get out of the way. I’ll be protecting you and once we find Tom you’ll get him out and back to the car—do you think you can remember how to find it?”

“Yeah,” Jared said. He nodded and willed himself to be braver than he felt. All of a sudden, with Christian nodding and shifting back into a wolf under the full moon he didn’t want to be there anymore. (But Tom--) “Try not to eat anyone in front of me.”

They moved out, Mike at the lead and the rest spreading out to follow.

\--

The building seemed too damn plain to be housing some secret werewolf-holding cell. It was just a farm house out in the middle of nowhere. The old porch had a white rail and there was a van sitting in the driveway looking as inoffensive and useless as a piece of shit. Mike walked over to sniff at it and then turned back to the group like he was affirming that they had the right place. 

The only lights that were on in the house was one on the second story and Jared crouched down behind the van while the wolves spread out around the house sniffing around a perimeter while Christian stayed close to him. “Shouldn’t they have better defenses against this kind of thing?” he whispered to Christian.

Christian gave him a flat, insulting wolf glare. 

“I know you can’t talk,” Jared mumbled. He stayed close against the van until Christian butted against him and pushed him up toward the house. Every step he took was another flash of his childhood and then a reason why he had to do this.

One: learning to ride a bike (Tom is Mike’s boyfriend).  
Two: that time in church when he lay down on the pew with his head in his mom’s lap and fell asleep. (Tom was his friend.)

By the time he’d made it up to the door he had gone through all of his middle school memories and listed Tom’s good qualities right down to his white smile. He turned the knob on the door and pushed in with his shoulder. It wasn’t locked on the knob but the deadbolt was stuck. Christian gave him another of those stares that accused him of being worthless or an idiot or perhaps a worthless idiot. Then Chris slammed into the door at a running start and busted it off the hinges and knocked it inward. 

It was, naturally, the least covert manner of entering the house. As soon as the door hit the floor with a clatter there were shouts inside the house and Jared pushed his back against the wall outside and let the wolves rush through the door. Christian stayed behind, on edge and alert.

Inside he could hear the wolves snarling and growling and the thud-thump of their paws hitting the wood. A door slapped open and there was the blunt sound of bodies smacking together. Jared slid down the wall in a crouch, hands up by his ears and Christian only eyed him for a brief second before turning his attention back to the door. 

A gunshot tore through the air with a crack and Christian shuffled forward on his feet and then backward again. The sounds of a fight echoed out through the first door, someone was shouting, muffled by the growls and snarls of the wolves as they took him down. Jared closed his eyes (closed them tight) when the smell of blood came out of the house toward him. 

The bark from inside startled him after the hateful snarling came to a pause and Christian headed in through the door, sure that Jared would follow. There was a body, face up and almost faceless, right on the rug at the bottom of the stairs. The wolves were up there, travelling in circles around the little kitchen and hall way and scratching the back door and sniffing at it. 

“That’s it?” he asked, “where’s Tom?”

Jensen was blood splattered and Mike was soaked in it. Milo and Zoe were stepping away from a body that looked like it had just escape the meat grinder and Erica was delicately nosing at the bottom of doors. They were looking for something—for Tom, for the rest of the kidnappers, for some hidden door. 

“Basement?” he asked. He looked around at the kitchen. Mike was over by the shelf against the wall, scratching at it and whining low in his throat. The others came over, sniffed around and seemed unimpressed by whatever he’d found. Jared grabbed the shelf by the sides and pulled it out. Mike tried to get around it and knocked it back and barked at him. “Get out of the fucking way,” he said. He yanked it again, felt it grate on the linoleum of the floor and tear through it. (Not that it mattered, they were burning the house down.) He got it out far enough and then Mike was moving forward, into the tight corner and the thin door there. He scratched at it and Jensen came over to sniff along the bottom of it. His back went all stiff and his hackles went up.

“Hey,” Jared said, “maybe you should ask these assholes how they found us.” (Maybe he’d been watching too many movies.) He leaned in across the edge of the counter that ran almost all the way up to the door and pushed it open. 

Christian nipped him on the ass when he tried to go after the wolves and Jared rubbed at it while Christian stood guard.

He would have stayed right there—let the wolves get rid of the threat but there was a howl followed by happy barking that didn’t sound familiar. Jared moved and Christian dove after him but he made it through the door first. The stairs were rickety and steep and he almost fell off them with Christian right at his back. He hit the dirty concrete floor and the smell of piss was almost overwhelming. The only light was in the distance, a naked hanging light bulb that cast a pocket of light on a tiny cage with a wolf in it barking louder and louder. It pulled its lips back from its teeth, snarling and yapping. Tom was in a cage across from it, looked dirty with a bloody lip and one hell of a cramp in his neck but all in one piece.

There was one body on the floor, face down and bleeding a puddle onto the floor. Across the room the swarm of wolves was taking down a still struggling body that was screaming shrilly over the yapping snap of the caged wolves’ bark. Above that was Jensen’s growl and then his warning snap of teeth. Christian headed over to the pack just as Jensen tackled Chris away from the body. 

They fell into a roll and knocked into the darker part of the basement, snarling and snapping. The other wolves were divided between keeping the man on the ground and going to stand around Jensen and Chris fighting. 

“What the hell is going on?” Jared shouted. He looked at the cage with the wolf and reached out his hand but it snapped at the bars and snarled and then turned back to look at Jensen trying to shove Chris back into the corner and take him down. “Who are you?” he said to the wolf in the cage. 

Milo changed back into a human, blood-spotted and moving away from the body that was still screaming for help. He reached over to grab Jared by the elbow and pulled him closer. “That’s Chris’ sister,” he said, “and this bastard is the one that put her there.” Then he shoved Jared toward the fight. “Get your mate out of the way.” When Jared turned his head back to object, Milo was already a wolf again and headed over to the body on the floor to nose at its pockets.

“Jensen,” Jared said, “Jensen!” He pushed past the bodies and leaned into the fight to catch Jensen’s fur. Chris took advantage of the distraction to go for Jensen’s throat and Jensen countered and dragged Jared down with him. “Jensen!” he shouted. “Damn it you two—“

He was going to be eaten by wolves on a rescue mission. The others were barking now and Jared got stepped on by someone’s paws and it scraped through the shirt and down into his skin. He cursed at the pain and that seemed to pull Jensen out of the bloodlust fight to the death thing he had going. He looked down at him on his back on the concrete. “Chris,” Jared said, “go.”

Chris pulled back, up onto his feet and turned around to grab at the shelves at the end of the basement. After he’d slapped through the shelves he turned toward the corner and walked over and grabbed something that scrapped across the ground with a shriek. 

The wolf—his sister?—in the cage was worked up into a frenzy, snarling and foaming at the mouth and jumping at the bars of her tiny cage. Milo was human again and shoving his hands down into the pockets of the dead men. Christian was headed up the stairs (perhaps to check the pockets of the other dead men).

“Move,” Chris said. He heaved the shovel up and brought it down in the middle of the man’s gut. The man screamed like a balloon popping—all sound at the beginning cut off by the sharp slap of the shovel against his body. He put his hands up as Chris pulled it back and hit him again and then again and again. He threw the shovel to the ground and dropped to his knees with his fingers fisted in the man’s hair. “You fucking piece of shit,” he snarled at him before he started hitting him. He tightened his hands in the man’s short hair and beat his head against the concrete and—

“Just kill him,” Jared said. Jensen was standing over him, paws pinning him down against the ground and watching while Chris beat the man to death with the shovel and then his fists.

Aldis knocked Chris away from him and Steve and Zoe came in to make sure he was dead. Chris fell on his side, blood on his hands and splattered across his face. His eyes were manic and mad and he was shifting back into a wolf before Aldis even had him all the way on the ground. 

Christian came back with the keys and Milo took them out of his mouth and pried open the locks on the cages. Tom crawled out and Mike was there to throw both arms around him and hug him like he meant to kill him. They were both smeared with blood and pressing wet-sloppy-kisses against each other’s mouths despite it. 

The girl jumped out of the cage and dashed across the floor right up to the body that her brother had bludgeoned to death and started tearing into it. There was nothing in her except that violence and her snout covered in blood as she tore through his shirt and skin to his ribs. 

Jared turned his face away and Jensen looked down at him with blood dripping out of his fur and landing in fat-cool drops on his skin. He leaned down to lick his cheek and then stepped away from him. His snarl was loud in the small space. 

Milo cleared his throat, “get Tom out of here.” Then he was going wolf again. Mike was already pushing Tom toward the stairs and Jared got up to his feet and stepped around the body that was being torn to shreds and throw around in slaps and smacks to decorate the blood-covered floor.

\--

Outside, everything was perfectly quiet. Tom had his arms around Mike and Mike had one arm around Tom and pulled him along. They crossed the field with blood soaked in their clothes and the obscene silence in their wake. Mike found the car in the dark and pushed Tom up against the side of it to look at him, run his hands across his face and down to his chest and then kissed him again.

“I’m alright,” he said, “I’m fine—they didn’t even want me. I’m alright.” He sounded shaky and aching and not at all anywhere near fine. “I’m alright.”

“Let’s go,” Jared said. He pulled open the driver’s side door and yanked his keys out. He was smearing blood on the steering wheel and the seat and the ignition as he worked. Tom pulled open the passenger side door open and fell inside. Mike pushed his legs in and then closed the door. “Buckle up,” Jared said, “you okay?”

“No I’m fine,” Tom said, “might need a hospital—probably should find a shower first.” He looked at his clothes and his hands and his face went kind of white and he closed his eyes. “We should go.”

Yeah, they should go. Jared nodded and put the car in reverse to pull back out on the main road. 

\--

 

They drove for an hour and Jared had no fucking idea where he was going until he pulled up to the ruined campsite. It seemed like the stupidest place to go but he couldn’t go to the apartment covered in blood and he couldn’t think of anywhere else that the wolves would find him. Tom was giving him the most incredulous look as he stared through the windshield at the ripped tent and the spread of clothes and pages of books caught in the head lights. 

“I couldn’t think of anything else,” Jared said, “it has showers.”

Tom laughed and shook his head. “You really suck in extreme situations, you know that?” He looked out the window toward the showers down the path and then back at him. “Did I mention I think my ankle’s broken? What am I going to wear?”

“Mike’s shorts and shirt—they won’t fit great but it’s better than bloody clothes. Look, I can take you back to the apartment after you get this shit washed off you.” He put the car in reverse and took them back to the showers. The whole night was too damn dark even with the moon and Tom was awkward and heavy to get up the stairs and into the tiny shower. They struggled through getting him naked and Jared grabbed the big black trashbag from the can to throw his clothes in. He took his own clothes off and tossed them, scrubbed down in the shower and left the water running in hopes that it would wash away any trace evidence or whatever the fuck CSI called it.

He had new clothes in the trunk and bleach and paper towels. He got Tom out of the shower and into Mike’s clothes (that fit really poorly on Tom) and then into the back seat of the car. Then he set to bleaching all of the surfaces they’d touched inside the car and after every towel was stained pink and red he shoved it in the bag with the clothes. 

“Hospital now?” Tom asked.

“Yeah,” Jared said. He shoved the bag and the bleach in the trunk and climbed back in the driver’s seat. “Wait, aren’t there police at the hospital?”

“For fuck’s sake, just drop me off at the curb if you have to,” Tom said, “I need drugs.” He hissed when the car bumped back out onto the path and Jared winced with him in sympathy.

\--

There were police at the hospital, just roaming around the emergency room but they seemed to have better things to do with themselves than pay attention to a couple of twenty-something’s that looked like they went down the side of a hill while drunk. The doctor didn’t seem to think that anything was wrong with their story about how Tom fell.

They were there for hours and Jared kept the TV on the news channel waiting for some reporter to start shouting about a house fire and an animal mauling. Tom was knocked out on pain medicine and looked alright except for the bruises on his face and the busted lip. Jared didn’t like the silence—not from Tom, not from the reports that should have found a burning house by now. 

If the bodies were discovered mauled by animals the wolves would have to move again—away again and that didn’t mean much to Mike who would just go back to his life but that meant Jensen would leave again.

Which, yeah, he’d been shouting that he wanted since he saw them again but—

“I’m losing my mind,” he said to Tom’s sleeping face. Tom snored at him in return and Jared just sighed.

\--

By the time he dragged Tom back out of the ER, into the car, drove across town, dragged Tom out of the car and up the stairs and into his apartment he was exhausted and it was bright afternoon sunshine outside. As soon as he got the door open he was swarmed by wolves and roommates and Mike that just about shrieked like a princess and jumped on Tom. He pulled him away from Jared (which was fine by him). The wolves were yipping and then moving back to where they had been sleeping on what looked like the entire contents of the spare linens shelf in the hall closet. Chris was sleeping on the couch with his sister curled up next to him. 

Jensen stood up and grabbed him right by the door, pushed him back against it and started touching him. “You weren’t here.” He had his hands everywhere and he was sniffing at him, pulling at the clothes he was wearing to get at his skin.

“Kiss me and drag me to bed,” Jared said, “you know—to sleep.” He grabbed Jensen by the neck, all tense and the rapid throb of his pulse and pulled him in to kiss him. He was a tall, big guy and Jensen picked him up off the floor like he was a feather and pushed him back against the wall and kissed him with all that sloppy enthusiasm. 

Jared pulled his legs up (since he was being held up anyway, of course) and wrapped them around Jensen. He pushed his hands through his damp hair and tipped his head and stroked a thumb across Jensen’s cheek to calm him down. Jensen pressed in closer to his body. One of his hands slapped the wall and the other was down on the curve of his ass pulling him where he was easy to grind against. 

Oh _Christ_ and Jensen was naked. 

“Oh!” Sandy shouted from the side, “Oh! Sorry.” She was turning away with her hands over her eyes. Gen was right next to her with a cocky smile on her face and an approving nod. 

“Sleep,” Jared said and kissed Jensen one last time. He dropped his legs back down and Jensen moved back and stayed close at his back as he headed toward the bedroom. “Where’s Tom and Mike?”

“In my room,” Gen said, “not having sex or I’ll kill them. You’re telling me everything—like who the new one is—when you wake up.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jared said. He pushed open the door to his room and fell inside, landed on his bed with Jensen stepping up next to him in wolf form and as soon as he felt the slide of fur against his side he was just _out_.

\--

Waking up was the single most unpleasant experience of his life. It started with his dream like a DVR replaying the whole night from the car trip where Mike said he was good for Jensen and he wasn’t sorry to stepping in when Jensen had tried to keep Chris from beating a man to death to condoning that that—to the trash bags in Gen’s trunk. 

“Oh shit,” he mumbled. His whole body ached like it had back when he started pushing it through a workout routine just to punish his libido into behaving. He ached and hurt and was stiff.

Jensen looked over at him from where he’d been thumbing through a…dictionary. “What?” he asked.

“You’re reading a dictionary?” Jared said, “there are more entertaining books.” He stretched under the light sheet and pressed both his hands against his face. It was all his imagination but he swore he could still smell blood and bleach on them. “I forgot to get the bags out of Gen’s trunk.”

“We took care of it,” Jensen said. He looked back at the book and frowned at the pages before he turned around on the bed and leaned back on his elbow next to Jared. “You told them you were my mate, Jared.”

Yeah, he did but that was under pressure stress talking. He had to get to Mike and he had to get them to listen to him and he had to make sure that— Or fuck all that, he shrugged. “I am. There’s no changing that, isn’t that what everyone says? I’m yours, you’re mine.”

Jensen leaned in and kissed him. “I want to fuck you,” he said. Then he kissed him again and pulled away. “You should come out to the living room, we’ve been waiting for you before we talk to Chris’ sister.”

“Why?” Jared asked.

Jensen was already up off the bed, wearing a white T-shirt and boxers and making both of them look completely temporary. He turned to look back at him with his hand on the door knob and said, “because you’re part of the pack.”

Funny how he had no idea how he felt about that.

\--

Sandy and Gen had gone to work and the living room was a mass of piles of mates idly licking each other affectionately. Milo was (for lack of a better description) cuddling with Aldis while Christian sulked right next to him, lifting his head only to growl something derogatory at them that Milo pointedly ignored. Aldis was doing the world’s best doggie smirk back at Christian and thwapping his tail against the ground happily whenever Milo licked him.

Zoe and Erica were in too tight a ball of fur with one another to really figure out what the fuck they were doing and he figured that was all for the best. Tom and Mike were stretched out on the couch snuggling carefully.

Steve was stretched out and snoozing and Chris was cleaning his sister’s matted fur. It was far too much of a considerate gesture for him.

Jensen cleared his throat and brought all the snuggling and preening to a halt with everyone lifting their head to look at him expectantly. “We’re ready.” He sat down on the floor with his legs crossed and Jared sat down with him.

They changed one by one, finding shorts and pants and T-shirts to put on (probably only because he was there) and Mike moved to sit on the coffee table so he was facing out toward them. Tom was laying on the couch but he was listening.

Chris changed before his sister did and he dropped a set of Gen’s clothes on the ground next to her. His hand smoothed through her fur and scratched behind her ear and she whined before looking around and then slowly shifting. 

She was blonde, small and pale. She knelt on the ground with her arms wrapped around her chest and fading marks and bruises criss-crossing over her back and mats in her long hair. When she looked up her face was still dusty from the dirt that had been stuck in her fur and her lips were cracked with a fading bruise across her cheekbone. She grabbed the clothes Chris left for her and pulled them on.

“What’s your name?” Jared asked, “I mean, I’m Jared. I’m new.”

“You don’t fucking talk about me?” she demanded from Chris and punched him in the chest hard enough to make him grunt and knock him backward. “Thanks a lot dickwad.” She smiled at Jared, “I’m Alona.” 

The others were all grinning—even Mike—and Chris rubbed the sore red spot on his chest with the faint twist of amusement on his face. He reached over and shoved a hand against her face to push her to the side. “I talk about you. Just not to that bitch.” He grinned over at Jared and then straightened up.

“He’s the biggest bitch I’ve ever seen,” Alona said. When Jensen growled at the word Alona flinched and dropped her eyes down to stare at her hands. “Sorry alpha,” she said quietly. Her shoulders slumped forward and she looked as repentant as a dog with its tail between its legs. 

“Don’t do that,” Jensen said. He looked just as sorry as she did, “Alona—”

“Shut up, Jensen,” Chris said. He put his arm around her and pulled her in against his side. She moved with him, pressed her head against his shoulder and he whispered something into her hair that made her smile and his hand patted her hair before he let her straighten up again. “Tell them,” Chris said.

Alona looked at Jensen—right at Jensen—and went pale and looked at Chris who just nodded at her. “I was with the pack,” she said, “it’s been hell since you left, he locked down the pack and refused to allow anyone to leave for anything. He’s killed deserters. So no problem, he was always a dickface but now he’s a psychotic dickface. Then he calls me before a council meeting—yeah, whatever, we’ve never been big supporters of the Alpha. I figure he wants to kill me or maybe breed me—either way I’m going down fighting—and then he tells me that I’m going to serve a greater purpose.

“He was _human_ , the fucking Alpha hasn’t been human in years. He was human and he was talking to these…asshats. These humans, these disgusting little examples of humans that put me in that fucking cage and put me in their fucking van. He sold me to them.”

Jensen was expressionless, watching her talk and she was furious and pink and moving her hands while she spoke. Jared cleared his throat at the silence, “why?”

“They were talking about, that’s all they’ve been talking about—they were hired to kill him.” She pointed at Jensen. “I was just the payment. He,” she thumbed back at Tom on the couch, “was supposed to be you.” She motioned to Jared.

“He sold you to some…hunters so they’d kill Jensen?” Jared said. He looked at Jensen, the stiff set of his back and the bristling silence. He wanted to touch him but it looked like he reached his hand out he’d get it bitten off. 

“Yes,” Alona said. “They were the stupidest hunters ever—but yes.” 

The pack was silent, uncomfortable, looking at each other and not at Jensen and not at him. Even Chris was keeping his gaze down and his mouth shut. Mike, over on the table was looking at Tom on the couch. 

“Jensen,” Jared said. His fingertips grazed against Jensen’s skin and Jensen jerked away from him, sliding across the old wood floor and turned to look at him like a feral animal. His eyes were bright and reflective and furious (hurt). He bared his teeth at him and Jared saw nothing but animal in him.

Jared leaned forward, put his hands on the floor and ducked his head down so when he moved forward he was down low and submissive (in front of everyone and what was his life that this was his first instinct) and he pressed his face in against Jensen’s neck. His muscles were taut and his pulse was heavy in his vein but he was barely breathing through his clenched-tight teeth. He kept his hands down and kissed his neck, and nuzzled against it like rubbing it in. 

Jensen gave, just a little, just enough that Jared could lift his hand and put it on his shoulder and slowly-slowly work it around before he brought the other one up and do the same. He shifted on his knees and Jensen wrapped his arms around him and they were hugging with Jensen’s face against him—safe against the pack, safe against his skin, safe with him. “I won’t let him hurt you,” Jensen said, “I won’t let him hurt any of you.”

Jared looked over at the pack still averting their eyes but sneaking sideways glances at them. Mike was the only one looking right at them. He was just staring, not smiling or frowning but watching with a sudden curiosity.

“I know,” Jared said. He turned his face back in against Jensen’s neck and kissed him again. “I know.” With his lips against Jensen’s skin he closed his eyes and let himself feel nothing but the absolute comfort and contentment and the blinding _want_ for Jensen. It moved through him and took over and left him with only a tiny corner of his own mind to think. “I’ll help, I’ll do whatever you need.”

Jensen lifted his head away from him and looked at his pack, he kept one hand on Jared as he leaned away. They were all waiting, silent and hurting and ready to hunt. Jensen dropped his hand away from Jared and said, “I’m going to challenge him. I’m going to kill him.”


	11. (stand up now) 1

Jeffery Dean called him on the sixth day he’d missed work and left him a message that went something like this:

“ _Jared. I know that Sandy said you were going through some kind of life changing event or something. Son, unless you’ve been attacked by wild dogs I’m going to need you to come back to work or I’m going to have to replace you._ ”

Jared laughed until he had tears in his eyes and was flat on his back in the space between the couch and the table. Jensen watched him with his game of Mario Kart spinning the pause music with an eyebrow of concern for his mental health. When he stopped laughing so hard that it hurt and broke down into chuckles and hiccups he turned his head to look at Jensen. “I just lost my job,” he said.

“Is that funny?” Jensen asked. He wasn’t the same as he had been before he decided to kill his father. (Because, well, who would be?) There was nobody (that they knew of) actively hunting them at the moment but Jensen was sliding backward to that time when he didn’t talk and just followed him everywhere like a lonely dog. 

“No,” Jared said, “I lost my job, I’m behind on my classes and I’m going to help my soul mate kill his father. None of its funny.” He picked up his phone and sorted through the other messages he had gotten. There was a text from Eric that said he needed time and he didn’t want to be called. There were a dozen calls from Gen that were probably really Jensen wanting to know where he was while he was at the hospital. 

“Why are you laughing?” Jensen asked.

“So I don’t lose my mind.” He looked over at the chair where Jensen was sitting with the game in his hands. “If you kill him, won’t that make you the alpha? I mean—won’t you become the leader of the whole pack?”

Jensen shrugged.

“Wolf geek,” Jared sing-songed at him.

“Werewolf,” Jensen countered. It was as close to a joke as he’d ever gotten and Jared smiled at him and confused the fuck out of him by doing it. “Why?”

Jared shrugged. He put his hand on the couch and hauled himself back up to sit on it. The apartment was quiet without the other wolves around but they were polite enough to find other places to go and fuck. The full moon apparently kicked their libidos into some kind of hyper drive or just gave them too much energy to work out with just running through the limited forest around them. “Do you want to go back there?”

“No,” Jensen said, “I want to be with you.” He looked at the game again and then at him. “I won’t let the alpha put my pack in danger.” 

“You said you wanted me to be a werewolf,” Jared said. He’d thought about that a little, in between bleaching Gen’s car and watching the news reel play about how a house had been burnt down and remains had been found in the basement. Police were investigating but thus far there were no leads. 

“Yes,” Jensen said.

“What if I don’t want to be a werewolf?”

Jensen shrugged, “then I won’t turn you.” 

Jared flipped his phone over in hands a few times while he thought about that. Everything was jumbled up in bubbles in his head—everything was too crowded to make sense and the proximity to Jensen’s damn body made him want to jump on him and lick him and bite him and keep rubbing until he covered him in his scent. He didn’t even know what the fuck he smelled like so he’d never be able to smell himself on Jensen. “Would you live like that? With a human mate?”

“I don’t want to,” Jensen said, “but I would.” He hit the button on the game so the music stopped and then set it to the side and watched him. For a minute it seemed almost like he was going to say nothing and then he drew in a breath. “I’m stronger than you. I could hurt you.”

Yeah, he’d thought of that. “I’m not that fragile,” he said. Then he huffed and pushed himself up so he was sitting up on the couch and shoved up to standing. “Why are you still sitting around here? I thought the moon made you stir crazy or something. Let’s get out of here for a while.”

Jensen looked up at him and then smiled just a little and nodded.

\--

So Jared hadn’t exactly been planning on taking a werewolf out on a date. That was why he had no idea how he found himself at an arcade except that he figured that Jensen would probably enjoy it. Everything was bright with lights and loud and it smelled like popcorn and teenager sneakers. He bought coins and stood next to Jensen as he scanned the room and crinkled up his nose at the smell. 

“Video games,” Jared said, “come on—“ He dragged Jensen over to the two person racing game with the seats and the fake wheels and Jensen climbed in and looked at the screen and kind of grinned. “Yeah, I thought you’d like that. Gas pedal is down there and there’s a brake.” Then he pushed the tokens into the slot and the game came to life with all kinds of lights and noises. “For future reference,” Jared said as he tried to get his knee in past the wheel and figure out how he was going to fit into the tiny little space, “when you start playing a two person game, you should make some kind of boast about how you’re going to win.”

Jensen considered that. “I’m going to win,” he said.

Jared laughed and turned his attention the track and the lights blinking red-yellow-green.

\--

Jensen moved from the racing game to the shooting games to the fighting games and ended up at the big box in the center with the lights that ran in circles. You were supposed to hit some button when the light hit a certain point and then you won whatever shit prize you managed to stop the light at. The game was stupid and Jared tried to pull him away from it but Jensen whined and demanded tokens.

“This game is for idiots that want to—” _waste their money_ , he was going to say but Jensen slapped the big flat button and stopped the light and won a sparkly jewelry bracelet. “Show off.”

Jensen fished it out of the prize slot and stole more coins out of the little bucket. He handed the bracelet to Jared and put the coins in the slot. “You’re just grumpy because you’re a loser,” Jensen said.

“Oh, you’re learning.” He sighed and watched Jensen slap the button and earn himself a DVD copy of the My Little Pony movie. “We’re not keeping that,” Jared said. He set it on the edge of the game and held the little bucket so Jensen could dig more out. “How about you go for something a little more manly?”

Jensen pushed him to the side and watched the lights go round and round. When they circled toward him they caught in his eyes and made them reflect back so he looked possessed for little catches of a minute. His hand slapped down on the lights and a box with a pair of sunglasses clattered down into the prize bin. Jensen stooped down to pick it up and plucked open the box while a little girl snuck up behind them with her eyes on the Pony movie.

“Are you proud of yourself?” Jared asked.

Jensen looked at the sunglasses and then put them on—took two tries to get them right—and then turned his head to look around at the arcade. “Yes,” he said. He turned back to the little girl with her fingers outstretched toward the movie.

“Is this yours?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jensen said, “you can have it.”

“Take the glasses off while you’re inside,” Jared said. He set the bucket of tokens and the bracelet down and reached forward to lift the glasses so they were resting on Jensen’s head and not over his eyes. “Otherwise you look like a douche. You hungry? Why am I asking? You’re always hungry.”

\--

Having survived four years of college, Jared was familiar with almost every close by and relatively cheap pizza place in the area. He zeroed them in on a buffet and set Jensen loose on the poor, innocent pizza.

“It would be easier if you’d just put the whole thing on your plate and bring it back with you,” Jared said. He wiped his greasy fingers on a napkin while Jensen tore through another three slices of pepperoni pizza like it was a fresh bleeding kill. “Napkin,” he said.

Jensen wiped his face and left the napkin wadded up next to his plate. He didn’t like straws but he would gulp his soda from the cup without it. When he’d finally managed to eat his share (and then some) of the pizza he sat back in his side of the booth and picked up the box with the bracelet. It was silver with little pink heart beads on it and nothing that either one of them should rightfully have had with them. He didn’t even know why he hadn’t given it to the girl with the movie except that he wasn’t sure how Jensen would feel about that. “You wear this to make yourself more attractive?” he said.

“Yeah,” Jared said. “Kind of—sometimes. You wear it because you think it looks nice or because someone gave it to you and it’s special. A lot of the time, someone you love gave you something like that—only not as cheap—and you wear it so everyone will know that someone loves you and to show that you appreciate the gift and who gave it to you.” He stacked their plates to set at the side of the table and dumped the rest of his drink into Jensen’s cup before setting it to the side too.

Jensen considered that as he turned the box over and then leaned forward and handed it to him. 

“Dude,” Jared said, “it’s a girl’s bracelet.” Jensen stared at him like he was an idiot. “Yeah, that probably means nothing to you does it?” Jensen shook his head. Jared huffed and took the box. He ran his thumb across the cheap plastic it was cased in and then set it down and folded his hands across it. “Do you know what love is, Jensen?”

“Do you?” Jensen asked. “I don't always understand your language and I’m an animal but I’m not incapable of feeling.”

“And you love me? Not because we’re soul mates but because you actually love _me_?”

That got a shrug and Jensen leaned forward to pick up the cup and drink out of it. He was quiet for a long time and then when he finally figured out what he wanted to say he cleared his throat and leaned in close to him. “Yes.”

Jared pulled open the plastic box while he soaked that in. It was a clash in his gut because he hadn’t seen the man in four years and they’d only been here together a week. He got his romantic ideals ruined for him when he was eighteen years old and he never had really believed in love at first sight. He knew for a fact that he’d been a bastard to Jensen (without meaning to and then with meaning to) but there he was watching him with the eyes (like a puppy) and saying he loved him. He pulled the bracelet out of the box and spread his fingers to test how big it was. 

The clasp on it was tiny and it took him three tries to get it hooked around his wrist. It only barely made it all the way around and then didn’t go past the bone there, stayed right against the base of his hand. 

“Thank you,” Jensen said. He finished off the soda in his glass and sat back with a satisfied sigh.

\--

“Oh look at that,” Alona said when they got back to the apartment after midnight. She was laying out across the couch with Chris flopped out over the chair. He had one of Sandy’s poetry books and she had one of Jared’s porn magazines. 

Chris craned his head back to look at him and seemed confused until he saw the pretty bracelet on Jared’s wrist. “That is beautiful,” he said, “you should put out for that kind of high quality craftsmanship.”

Jensen smacked Chris on the head when he passed him.

Alona just grinned at them and when Jared went to go past her she caught him by the hand to look at the bracelet. She ran her thumb over the heart bead and then let him go. “I went through your room,” she said, “Chris told me I shouldn’t. Most of it was boring but I found these in your closet.” She lifted the stack of his magazines and then set them down again. “I like the stories.”

“Good,” Jared said, “yeah, enjoy that.”

Then he ran for it and found Jensen rolling on his bed with his shirt off and a guilty look on his face. “Alona was in here,” he said to explain.

“Don’t let me stop you,” Jared said. He leaned back against the door and watched Jensen go back to rolling on the bed. When that didn’t seem to do it for him he stood up and kicked his pants off and rolled around all over the sheets with his great big wolf body. “Want help?” he asked. He got barked at for his trouble and Jared rolled his eyes and crawled on the bed, threw his shirt to the side and lay down in the middle of the bed. 

Jensen settled on his belly next to him and rested his head on Jared’s bare chest. His breath was a hot pant against his skin and his fur was smooth and soft. He was nice to pet and warm and comforting like that. (And Jared was so far from normal by now that he wasn’t sure he could ever find his way back.) 

\--

 

Hours later, after midnight bled into the blackness of early-early morning, Jared ran his fingers down the thick fur on Jensen's back. Every time he did it Jensen relaxed a little more and must have been sleeping for a little while because he'd started whimpering like a dog did in a dream. "Jensen," he said. 

Jensen lifted his head enough to see him more clearly and then rolled all the way onto his belly and changed back to his human form. "Jared."

"Tell me something about you." Because Chris was right (what felt like) a hundred years ago when he said that Jensen knew things about him but Jared didn't know anything about him.

"I'm a werewolf," Jensen said. He didn't seem to understand the concept of human humor but he told a mean dead-pan joke without intending to.

Jared frowned at him, "something I don't already know."

Jensen ducked his head, thought about it like he was searching around for something he could translate into English words and human understanding. When he finally found something he looked up again and pushed himself up to sit cross legged on the bed by his hip. "I don't like TLC."

"The TV channel?" Jared asked.

"Yes," Jensen said, "Chris helped me learn how to be more human but he had a job so he would leave the TV on and tell me to watch it. Most of it was boring and hard to understand. I found out later I was supposed to watch it as a human and not a wolf but it was still boring. He told me not to watch 'soaps' so he'd pick the channel for me." Jensen shrugged, "I don't like TLC."

Jared grinned at him. "I would never have guessed that you didn't like TLC. You don't strike me as much of a TV watcher." He put his arms behind his head. "Tell me something else."

Jensen picked at the sheets. "What?"

"I don't know," Jared said, "something. Tell me what you want to do--like not right now but for the rest of your life. Where do you want to go, what do you want to do--that kind of thing."

"I don't understand what you're asking," Jensen said. He was looking at Jared's chest, bare skin and stretched muscles all the way down to the crinkled edge of his boxers hugging his hips. "Jared," he said as much to his belly button as to him, "I was raised to kill the alpha--to be the alpha I have to defeat him. That is what I was raised to do, what I was taught to be and the alpha would never have submitted to me." His hair was shorter now than it had been before, spiky and brown instead of blond. His skin was pale still and he looked up at his face like he'd never ever admitted those words to anyone before in his life. "I'm alpha now, I go where my pack goes and I do what I have to do to make sure they're safe."

"If you weren't alpha," Jared said quietly.

"I would stay with you." Jensen wasn't human enough to know that words like that were so naked and raw that they couldn't be said outright. Couldn't be said so sincerely, so firmly, so bluntly and he looked at Jared's face while he said them. He didn't know to expect something, didn't know to be upset when Jared couldn't even think of words to answer them. He just leaned forward again, stretched out on his belly against Jared's side with their bare skin brushing here and there. "I don't want you to go with us," Jensen said against his side.

"I'm going," Jared said. He rolled onto his side, rested his hand on Jensen's back, trailed fingers down the curve of his spine and rested it at his ribs. "You need me with you."

"If I lose, they will kill you," Jensen said. 

That was an idea he didn't need to think about, didn't even need to know about because he'd thought of it somewhere between pledging to do whatever Jensen needed and right now. He just pushed it aside, swept it right under the mental rug and ignored that it even existed. "You won't lose. You have me, you have your pack--he has nothing." He kissed Jensen's temple. "We should get some sleep."

Jensen turned his head to nuzzle his face in against Jared's skin. When he moved again he was changing back into a wolf and laying next to him all furry and too hot. Jared stroked his fur and closed his eyes and concentrated on absolutely nothing so long he bored himself to sleep.

\--

His mother called him so early in the morning that he was blurry, half awake, half-hard and nothing like coherent. He was also snuggling against Jensen in his wolf form and the combination of being half-hard and snuggling a giant wolf made him feel a little too skeevy to want to talk to his mother. Jared answered the phone anyway, held it up against his ear and tried to work out how to get his arm out from under Jensen without getting it eaten.

“Hi Mom,” he said.

“Hi Mom?” she repeated at him, “hi Mom? Jared Tristen Padalecki don’t you _dare_ hi Mom me. Do you have any idea how much money it costs to put you through college? Where have you been? Why haven’t you been answering your phone? And you tell that little girl that lives with you that I know better than to think you’re out camping. Camping, Jared? You hate camping.”

Jensen lifted his head and turned it toward the phone. He groaned in his chest and it came out as a dissatisfied dog mumble. Then he licked Jared across the mouth and laid his head back down. 

“Mom,” Jared said, “it’s complicated and I’d really like to talk to you abou—”

“Jared,” she said.

Jared rolled onto his back with his left arm still pinned under Jensen’s body and let out a breath. (He could tell her the truth, over the phone and have her think he’d finally lost his damn mind. Or he could tell her part of the truth about how he helped commit a quadruple murder or—) “You remember that guy I told you about from college back east?”

“Yes I remember, the one that broke your heart and made you a mess that we couldn’t go near for months. I remember him.”

“Right,” Jared said, “well, he found me here and we’ve been going out. I just got so wrapped up in it I forgot about school and everything and I’m going to get my act together.”

The silence on the other end of the phone was kind of damning. It was the silence that preceded a massive explosion or a cataclysmic storm. He braced for the impact but when she spoke it was soft and curious and not at all loud, shrill or authoritative. “This is the guy you thought was your soul mate?”

“He is my soul mate, Mom. Look, it’s all really complicated,” like four legs and a tail complicated, “but what happened before—that was both of our faults, we weren’t ready and now I think if we gave it a shot it’d really work. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have forgotten about school.”

“You’ll catch up,” she assured him, “it’s no big deal. Just go in and talk to your professors. Don’t tell them that you were out with some boy all this time but maybe you were too sick to move—something like that. I’m sure they’ll understand.” His mother lived in a magical world where unicorns were real. (And Jared lived in a magical world were werewolves were real…so, there was that.) “And if you’re still seeing this boy in a few weeks you’ll just have to bring him with you so we can meet him.”

Jared rolled back onto his side and pressed his face against Jensen’s neck. “Ok Mom, I’ve got to go. Possibly to shoot myself in the head multiple times.”

“Find out what he likes to eat, Jared. I bet I can make it.”

“Ok Mom, that sounds great.”

“I’m so excited! I knew you’d eventually find someone that would…”

“Bye Mom!” he shouted into the phone out of fear of hearing the end of that sentence. He hit the end button and threw it in the general direction of the closet door. He groaned against Jensen’s fur and stretched out his legs and back and then snuggled back up to him. “Why are you still sleeping?” 

Jensen woofed at him lowly and Jared stroked his fingers through his fur. 

“Yeah, tell me later. I’m sleeping.”

\--

Gen was his best friend (besides Mike who was also a werewolf). She was easy to talk to and rational and sweet and insanely overprotective of him in a way that was charming and not immediately psychotic. He really would have married her if not for the gay-and-mated thing and maybe that was why Jensen took such offense to her presence whenever they ran into one another in the morning. (Then again, Jensen was pretty much unapproachable in the morning before he'd swallowed a whole pot of thick, strong, black coffee. So maybe it was nothing personal.) Jared hadn't asked so much as flat out told Jensen that he was going out with Gen (while Sandy was at work) and he didn't want Jensen to escort him and that was it.

Jensen didn't ask but flat out told him that he was not going anywhere without at least one wolf with him on the off chance that another set of suicidally stupid hunters came after him. He did let Jared pick whoever he wanted to go with him and he didn't add any other stipulations. It wasn't so much a compromise as blindly butting heads.

Jared took Chris who took Alona and they were happy enough to lounge far away from them at the park, just laying in the grass and reading books, idly watching the humans running and moving around them. 

Gen and him were laying on a blanket, her against his chest and him staring at the sunny sky and the floating white clouds. "I'm sure you didn't bring me here to snuggle, Jared." She was curled up against his body, hand toying with the buttons on his shirt. "Even if I do miss our snuggling."

"This is really it," Jared said, "I just wanted to--do this." In case Jensen couldn't beat his father, or just in case he never got the chance to feel so pleasantly normal and human ever again. He knew she was watching him and he couldn't bring himself to look back at her. 

"I'll still love you," Gen said quietly and put her chin on his chest. She popped his button loose and then toyed with it and scratched her nail across the T-shirt under it. "Talk. You know I can hurt you."

His smile just didn't have the dedication to break across his face and it died a premature death and fizzled out just like that. "They keep telling me that the reason I loved wolves was because I knew about Jensen--Chris says that sometimes people like me feel too much of their souls. So that's why I'm a wolf geek--and that should be amazing. That should be this powerful, awesome, awe-inspiring thing but I have no choice. I have no choice but to love Jensen, I have no choice but to follow him or miss him. I have no choice about who I want to have sex with or even just touch--I get sick whenever I think about touching other people like that. Sometimes I just want to shove some hot guy into a room and rip his pants off. But I can't and I never could and it's not _fair_." He felt her finger against his T-shirt again, petting him while he raged. 

"So what do you want?" Gen asked. 

"I want a fucking choice, I want to feel like--I have some say in this." He felt like he was jumping up and down and screaming like a toddler and she was just watching him with steady eyes and a calm hand.

Gen pushed her elbow against the pillow and looked down at him. Her thigh was across his and her hand was still on his chest, one finger snuck inside his shirt. Her hair fell down and curtained away the glare of the sun when he turned to look at her. "Why don't you have one? I mean--I am not in support of the werewolves. I don't have any idea what happened back east and since you've barely even mentioned your freshman year I'm going to assume it was some heavy shit. But--growling, glaring and in general acting like an animal guarding his territory aside--Jensen seems okay. He's a fixer-upper, sure."

"Jensen wants me to be a werewolf," Jared said.

"You want him to be a human," Gen said quietly.

"What would you do if you were me?" Thing was, if he could just figure that out--what he wanted, what to do--he would be so much better off.

Gen pushed away, farther, sat up with her legs crossed and folded her hair behind her ears. She rested her hands in her lap and looked across the park at where the two wolves were eyeing the humans and talking low among themselves. "Would you kill for Jensen, to protect him?"

"What kind of stupid question is that?" Jared asked, "why would I have to kill someone to protect Jensen? He's the one with the teeth and the killer instinct." But Gen just looked at him, serious and steady and waiting. He closed his eyes and pressed a hand across them to block out the red glare of the sun through his eyelids. He thought of Jensen's father and how much he hated him and-- "Yeah, maybe."

"You're hopeless," Gen said. She shook her head at him. "Completely hopeless. Also, you have a choice. I'm pretty sure you told Jensen to leave once and he did."

Yeah but he was eighteen and hurt. He hadn't just spent four years with the nagging loneliness of knowing that his soul mate was out there somewhere because he sent him away with no idea when he'd ever see him again. He was twenty two and stupid now but he was piecing together parts of a whole picture. Jared rolled onto his side, curled around her and pushed his face into the blanket. "I don't know what to do."

"Yes you do," Gen said. She threaded her fingers through his hair. "Stop fighting yourself so hard."

"I want to get drunk," Jared said into the blanket, "can we do that?" Before he marched off to die with a pack of werewolves that thought he was half their leader. (Because, he kind of was.)

\--

The wolves headed out at twilight to go 'train' for the upcoming fight. Jared was almost entirely sure that meant that they were going out to run around and fight one another. As his babysitter he got Steve who didn't seem to give a damn about much of anything and waited for Jensen to be out of eyesight and then flashed him a peace sign and headed out to lounge on the balcony.

Sandy had a big enough bed to fit them all and her computer was a desktop with a big enough monitor that they could all lay around and get drunk while Hugh Grant chased after some girl or another that he inadvertently offended and had to win back. (That's just what the man did.) 

"Have you had sex with him yet?" Sandy asked. She was leaning back against the headboard wearing shorts that were so short they could have been mistaken for underwear. Her tank-top was loose and he wiggled a finger inside the arm hole to poke her boob and got slapped for it. "Stop it," she shouted.

Gen was a giggler when she got drunk and she was laying all across his body with her giggles popping like bubbles against his chest. Her fingernails scratched at his skin below the shirt and he laughed so hard it felt like the bed was shaking. "Answer the question, Padalecki," Gen said.

"No," he roared, "no, I haven't had sex with him."

"God," Sandy said, "I'd do him. Hell, I'd fuck him so hard he was walking crooked when I got done." 

"Shut up," he whined at her. He shoved at her shoulder and she tipped to the side before righting herself. "That's my soul mate you're lusting after. My big gay, furry, wolfy soul mate."

"You're not using him," Sandy said. She handed him the bottle and he sat up enough to get another swig straight from the source. "Maybe that's why he's so pissy about people touching you."

"Yeah, that's it. He just needs to get his dick in me and he'll calm down and play nice." Jared rolled his eyes and both of the girls burst into laughter on either side of him. It made a deafening stereo effect that did nothing good for his attempt at bitterness. "God," he said when Gen handed him the bottle back, "I really hope I don't die. I'd miss you so much."

"What?" Sandy asked. "You're not going to die. Why would you die? Does Jensen know you're going to die? I bet he'd be so pissed if you died."

Gen snorted and Sandy stuck her tongue out at her. "Jensen wouldn't let him die. Duh."

Jared poked her in the side and she started laughing and squirming around. Sandy set the bottle down and attacked him with her pointed fingers and her cruel and unusual knowledge of his weak spots. They rolled on the bed until they rolled right off and then they jumped on him and demanded he carry them to the kitchen. Sandy crawled up his back and Gen stood on his feet while he shuffled them out.

They were drunk idiots sitting on the floor of the kitchen eating all the crackers and chips in the house and drinking tall glasses of water to stave off hang overs that would have killed them otherwise. 

"I'm drunk," he said, "I'm really drunk."

"The boy has a way with words!" Sandy declared. She threw a cracker at him, "give him a medal."

"I'd rather give him a kiss!" Gen attacked him again, her lips pressing against his cheeks and mouth while he tried to shove her off. "Oh fine." She pouted as she sat back.

"I should take a shower," he said, "you know, so he doesn't smell girl all over me."

"No leave it," Sandy said, "then he'll come back and like rip off your clothes and make passionate love to you to remind you that you are his and only his!" 

"I'm taking away your subscription to Harlequin," Jared said, "I'm taking it away and I'm not giving it back. Ever. Last thing I want is a werewolf ripping my clothes off--thanks." Then he shoved himself up, caught the counter and steadied himself. "Shower and sleep, ladies."

\--

In the morning, there were sleeping werewolves all over the place. They were curled up in pairs (and that one threesome). Jared had to pick his way through the snoring bodies to get out on the balcony to get a breath of air that didn't smell like sour dog fur. When he opened the sliding door, Chris looked up at him from the newspaper he had folded over on his lap. He was shirtless, wearing only those damn shorts of his and there was a gash that started at the curl of his shoulder and disappeared down over his back.

His grin was feral--pleased--and he twiddled the pen he was holding back and forth in his fingers before he pointed it at him. "I almost had your girlfriend last night. Then the bastard got his teeth on me. I always forget how much they hurt--I swear he sharpens them." He pointed the pen again, "point is--I almost had him."

Jared rolled his eyes and stretched, rubbed his toes against the solid floor of the balcony and then looked around for anything to sit on and found nothing. "Where is he?"

"Running," Chris said.

"Do you think he can kill his father?" Jared asked. He didn't even know where the question came from (maybe last night, maybe the night before, maybe because he didn't want to die). 

Chris looked at him, hand clenched around the pen. He looked to the side and the sun caught his eyes and made his eyes look hollowed out for just a split second. His forehead wrinkled up as he thought. "I could," he said bitterly, "I could kill him a hundred times. Jensen? Maybe."

"Reassuring," Jared said. He rubbed his face and sighed hard against his palms. He looked out at the little courtyard behind the apartments and tried to feel anything but the immense uncertainty that felt like it was crushing him. "What happens if I become a werewolf?"

"To you or to him?" Chris asked.

"To him--to me, in general?" Jared said. "Just, what happens?"

Chris straightened up in the chair, tucked the paper behind his back and set the pen with it. "He bites you and it's going to hurt like a motherfucker. It happens pretty quickly but there's no set time--I've heard if you get up and move around it goes faster. You'll turn. I've heard its like--being held underwater, everything sounds and looks and feels different and you think you're going to die. When you come out of that--you're a wolf. You have a soul mate and that annoying feeling you've got now that you need to fuck him will be amplified by a hundred. You'll fight--he'll probably win and you'll fuck. Once you do, the whole soul mate thing is there forever. After that, Jensen can use the bond to hulk out and you never have to turn again if you don't want to." Chris shrugged, "Mikey says if you don't turn you start losing the sight and hearing and everything."

"Will it hurt me if he uses the bond to hulk out?" Jared asked.

"It makes you tired," Chris said. He reached back for the paper and the pen. 

Jared nodded and looked back through the open door at the piles of snoring fur. He had no idea how he felt about them, about the pack or even just a pack. He knew what he felt like years ago when he was just a kid and full of funny ideals but he had no idea now. It used to be a great idea--a family unit that took care of one another--but now he just...had no idea.

"Not to rush you or anything but the last of the full moon is tonight." Chris was already back to doing the puzzles in the paper and completely unconcerned with his reaction that bit of information. 

\--

Jensen came back after noon and shucked his clothes by the door, stumbled into wolf form and found the nearest pile of snoozing fur to snuggle with. Zoe made room for him with more graciousness than Jared would have thought she was capable of but she looked up directly at Jared while she did it. Erica whined at being disturbed but was settled back down with a lick.

The others woke up slowly, heads up and curious sniffs and moved closer to huddle around Jensen. They licked his dusty fur and crowded around him while he slept and when they'd jostled him away he snapped at them and showed his teeth.

They whined their apologies and Jensen laid his head down again with a huff. Jared got off the couch and went over to stand outside of the dog pile until they glanced back at him. He pointed Jensen who was moving around uncomfortably and they made room for him to sit in the middle of them. He put his back to the wall and ran his hands through Jensen's fur. 

Jensen turned his head to snap at him and Jared stared back at him. "I'm touching you," he said, "lay down and deal with it." He kept his hand on Jensen, fingers dug in through his fur to the heat of his skin. Jensen stared at him like losing the fight would mean something to him and Jared looked away first, down but kept his hand where it was. Jensen relaxed--slowly, slowly--and the others crowded back in again, laid across his legs and piled up to be close. He stroked their fur too, rubbed their ears and scratched the back of their necks when he could reach. 

"I don't know what you're afraid of," Gen said when she came out of her room, "you're already one of them."

Maybe that's what he was the most afraid of.


	12. (stand up now) 2

Chris had told him that he was going to fuck Sandy but he didn’t really think that meant anything beyond the generalized boasting that every male of every species did. He wasn’t expecting Chris to go so far as to find a clean shirt (from where he had no idea) and a relatively nice pair of jeans. He took a shower and came out smelling almost entirely human while wrinkling his nose up at that like it offended him all the way down to his very soul. Sandy was wearing her ‘I want to fuck this guy’ first date dress and a gleeful smile.

“You look good,” she said.

Chris looked her over just like a wild animal sizing up a potential mate and grinned just short of lewdly. “You look better.” Then he stuck out his elbow and she almost swooned as she wrapped her hand around his arm. “We’ll be back.”

Sandy winked over her shoulder at him. Jared had to try hard not to puke. The other wolves (still lying around in great wolfy forms) made a variety of encouraging noises from yips to barks and one well placed howl. 

“See, now I’m grossed out,” Jared said. He was laying on the couch wishing his laptop wasn’t in a variety of little pieces in the trash somewhere with the rest of the campsite. (And bags full of bloody clothes, although he hoped that they burned those and hadn’t bothered to ask.) There was a story brooding somewhere in his subconscious (it might even be the story of his life, spit-shined and fictionalized). In the end, after the villain was dead the protagonist and the love interest rode off into the sunset in a banana yellow pinto. (Only not, because if he was riding off into the sunset in any car it would not be a banana yellow pinto.) 

“When are we leaving?” Jared asked. He still had to pack (or not, if he became a werewolf packing would be really simple: fur). He still had to tell the girls that he was leaving. That would probably include a lot of rationalizing a decision that he wasn’t even sure he was making with any logical part of his brain. He wasn’t going with Jensen because it made good business sense but because he could feel the edges of the aching wound that that the bastard had left when he trained his son to kill him one day. He didn’t know much about werewolves but he couldn’t imagine any creature with even a lingering teaspoon of humanity in it treating their children the way that bastard had Jensen. So he was going because Jensen needed him (kind of like why Jensen came back in the first place: to protect him). 

Since there really was absolutely no way that Jared could _protect_ Jensen from a monster like his father, the whole basis of his decision was couched in the emotional need to support Jensen. Physically, he couldn’t do anything but slow them down on their way there and be a distraction once they were there. 

Christian was the one that spoke up with an answer to the question he forgot he even asked, “after midnight tonight.” He was standing up, sorting through the pile of their dirty clothes to find something to wear. “If we bring you food will you cook?”

“Sure,” Jared said, “as long as its food you got from a store.”

“Spoilsport,” Milo said teasingly from behind the couch. They talked back and forth about how Jared wouldn’t even know what to do with food that didn’t come from a store and laughed about his lack of hunting skills while he tuned them out. Their noise faded out as they headed out into the hallway until the door closing capped it off. 

Jensen was the only one left and he came over to lie down next to the couch where Jared could reach down and scratching fingers through his thick hair while he thought. It might have been something close to crazy but he sighed and tipped his head to the side to look down at him. 

“You know what I want?” Jared said, “you know what I really want—because there’s a lot of things I don’t want and you’re probably tired of hearing about how I don’t want to have to love you and I don’t want to be hunted and I don’t like how this all turned out—I’m tired of hearing about it. I’m tired of thinking about it. I’m tired of being angry about it. I’m so fucking tired of having this weight on me, you know?” Jensen lifted up to put his head on the couch cushion next to him, breathing warm wuffs of breath against his side. “I want to date. That’s all. I want to fall in love with you.” He pushed his fingers through Jensen’s fur. “And this is why my father never let me have a dog.” Jared curled in, pressed a kiss against Jensen’s fur, rubbed his thumb across his thick fur and closed his eyes to drag in the smell of it. “Can we do that?” he asked, “can we forget about this—about all of this? Can we just start over and fall in love?”

Jensen shivered, changing shape—losing hair, showing skin—and his hand touched Jared’s shoulder and slid down to his elbow. His fingers and thumb gripped tight there and then he turned his face to kiss Jared’s neck and his jaw. 

“I want to see a movie,” Jensen said (low and quiet), “can we see a movie together?”

Jared smiled and nodded, “yeah. When we get back, we’ll go see a movie.” He tugged at Jensen and felt him moving to climb up onto the couch that wasn’t big enough for the two of them. It took a little maneuvering and an uncomfortable knee to the thigh but they managed to fit with their arms and legs tangled and Jensen’s head on his shoulder and hand pressed over his ribs. 

\--

Cooking for werewolves was an acquired skill of learning to undercook everything. He seasoned the hamburger, rolled it into a giant ball, put it in a pan and slid it into the oven. The steaks he tossed in a pan that had a lid with season and little bit of water and set them on the back burner. Milo was working on the vegetables and ignoring the constant presence of wolfy Aldis licking at the side of his pants leg and giving him the huge Precious Moment’s eyes. 

“So,” Jared said, “if gay werewolves are supposedly an abomination—what’s the statistics on threesomes?” He washed his hands off in the sink and picked up the three packs of chicken breasts that they’d brought back with them. “I’m not cooking these.” He dropped them in the sink picked up all of the bowls they’d been using to feed the hungry wolves. 

“Werewolves don’t play nice with others,” Milo said, “we don’t have statistics. In the pack we’re from, threesomes are non-existent. So are gay werewolves. In fact, humans like you? They also don’t exist. Any human is glad to become a werewolf and even happier to be bred to expand the pack.” He dropped the veggies into the biggest frying pan they had. Aldis licked his pants again and Milo shuffled to the side to reach for the salt and almost knocked into his head. “As far as I know, there has never been another threesome.”

Jared nodded. “How strong is he?”

“Jensen’s father?” Milo asked. He looked sideways only long enough to see Jared nod. Then he sighed, “Jared, I haven’t been back there in—” He reached down to feed Aldis a stalk of asparagus and then shoved him out of the way, “eight years. I couldn’t tell you what he’s like now. He’s fast and he’s ruthless and he’s cruel.” He turned, “Christian!”

Christian padded up to the kitchen wearing just his jeans and holding a hand of cards. “What?” He looked at Aldis and grinned at him before looking at Milo’s unsmiling face. “He didn’t want to play poker.” Then Christian looked at him, “did we ever tell you that Jensen has a great poker face?”

“Jensen can play poker?” Jared asked. 

“Jensen can play any game with rules,” Milo said, “it’s the stuff without rules that he has a hard time with. Poker, black jack, hearts, spades, rummy, pool—he can do all of that. We used to take him out and play for money.” He shrugged and slapped at Aldis’ wandering nose sniffing up his pants. “Chris taught us how to play but Jensen’s the best at it.”

“Chris knew how to play poker?” Jared said, “how does Chris know all this stuff?”

Christian wandered away and Aldis barked at Milo disapprovingly before heading out of the kitchen. Milo rolled his eyes at him and then stirred the vegetables in the pan. “Chris learned it all from his mother. You want to know more about it than that; you’ve got to ask him.”

Jared sighed and set the bowls out on the limited little counter space they had.

\--

The wolves gorged on half-cooked meatloaf and barely warm steak (dripping blood) with vegetables mixed in. For dessert there was raw chicken slapped into their bowls that they crunched through with their jaws. The sound of their chewing and licking and snorting for more was just shy of completely nauseating. Jared hid in the kitchen listening to the radio and eating the last of the Lucky Charms until they were finished and bringing the bowls back to drop into the sink. (All in wolf form, as odd as it was to see giant dogs dropping bowls in the sink.) 

It was late afternoon when they settled down to nap again. Jared was running out of daylight to make a decision in and he was no closer to really figuring it out. He sat in his room with a bag open on the mattress and tried to will himself to pack it just like he was really planning on following a wolf pack on human feet. His hands were curled around a pair of socks when Jensen came into the room (wearing his human skin) and crawled up on the bed to grab the DS and settle in to play Mario Kart for a while. 

Gen had asked him if he would kill for Jensen. In his gut he knew (with a shiver of absolute certainty) that he would but not how Chris had. Not how Jensen could (and had been able to) kill for him. He couldn’t imagine beating someone with his fists or tearing them apart with his teeth. He couldn’t imagine being the thing that stole a person’s last breath or spilled their blood across the ground. Jared couldn’t kill like that and it left him with one last thing he had to offer to go up against the thought of a man he hated so much more than he’d ever hated anything in his life. If he could bring himself to cross that line, if he could (in his daydreams and midnight dreams) imagine himself killing anything he would imagine tearing out the belly of the son of a bitch alpha that had sent hunters after his own son.

“Jensen,” he said and tossed the socks back into the bucket in the closet. He wasn’t going to need them anyway. He probably always knew that. He rubbed his damp palms against his knees as Jensen made a curious sound in his throat. “I want you to make me a werewolf.”

The background soundtrack of Mario’s rainbow road added an element of the ridiculous to the moment. He didn’t turn around—not yet, just closed his eyes and let those words soak in—when the music went silent with a snap of the DS closing, he looked back at Jensen. 

Jared nodded and he wasn’t even sure who he was nodding at, “yeah. I’m sure.”

Jensen looked like he was humming with energy under his skin, a sudden shaking urgency that he had been hiding so well all this time. His eyes were wide and reflective, all animal and almost nothing human at all. The sky outside his closed window was darkening down into dusk and the moon was going to be climbing its way back up soon. 

“Just after this? Clean slate, we start all over like I said earlier.” He swallowed back his nerves and Jensen set the DS to the side and pulled his legs in to cross them, pressed his hands into his thighs like he was holding himself back. “And, maybe, if at all possible could we not fuck in front of the rest of the pack? It’s probably not that big of a deal to you but I’d really rather not—”

Jensen moved forward, all blur of speed and kissed him. It was a rough bump of their faces together, he was talking and Jensen was impatient. He was quaking with energy as he tightened two hands around Jared’s face and pushed his tongue down into his mouth. Jared leaned into it, relaxed into the touch and let Jensen take what he needed and wanted and didn’t fight it when his body started screaming for more of that—just like that. “Thank you,” Jensen said against his swollen lips.

\--

Chris came back with Sandy hanging off him like a drunken cheerleader at a frat party. She was pink-cheeked and grinning, all madly in love (or just in lust) and her first date dress was wrinkled in that way that seemed to suggest that it had been removed and tossed aside at some point. She leaned up and kissed his cheek and he leaned in against it with a faint motion to return it but mostly he was watching the others watch him. 

“I had a great time,” Sandy said. She shot Jared a saucy little grin before she headed in toward her room. 

“I’m going out tonight,” (to be turned into a werewolf, might be gone a while) Jared called to her, “can you let Gen know?”

“Yup. Have fun!” Sandy yelled back.

Chris looked at them and then at the pack behind the couch that had been quietly waiting for him to come back ever since Jensen had come out of the bedroom to tell them the news. Maybe Chris didn’t need to be told or maybe the whole body language communication thing worked even when they were all human but his smile flattened down into a straight line. “Better make sure he bites you somewhere it’s not going to show if you’re going to keep pretending to be human.” He turned to head toward the door and everyone else was getting up to head out.

\--

The compromise (because that was important) was that the pack had to be out with them. One of them (whichever one Jared picked) had to be within sight and sound while Jensen did the biting but they were going to go away after Jared had his fur. He understood on some level under the nearly hysterical need for privacy that Jensen wasn’t going to be quite in his right mind while Jared was being drowned by his DNA changing. 

That didn’t mean he was happy about taking his clothes off in front of Milo. He couldn’t even figure out why he picked Milo. It seemed stupid, really. Chris was the one he trusted but Chris had a big mouth and a nasty frown about the whole thing. Christian was Jensen’s most loyal follower but that made Jared uneasy just at the thought that Christian would always side with Jensen no matter what. Aldis was too young (and he had no reason to think this other than that he just seemed too young and not nearly human enough). Zoe was a vicious bitch that probably would have been the best choice since she’d turned someone but she was also a girl and it was stupid but he didn’t want to get naked in front of her. Steve was a werewolf equivalent of a stoner and Mike wasn’t there.

No, he hadn’t even told Mike about it.

So there he was pushing his jeans down with Milo sitting to the side watching with that carefully disinterested look. Jensen was pacing a circle around him in the small clearing. The moon caught in his coat gleamed and made him look just like something from a horror movie. Jared didn’t know how fair it was to be afraid of something he asked for but he was anyway. His shirt got dropped on his jeans and he was down to his shorts. 

Milo was polite enough to look to the side while he stripped those off and put them with the pile. Jared sat on his clothes because everywhere else was filthy with forest dirt. He drew in a breath and let it out again. “Up here,” he said and pressed his hand against his upper thigh. He was known to wear shorts in the summer and anywhere above the waist was out so that left his thighs. 

Jensen came over and sniffed at him—all naked skin and licked his neck and down on his leg. He nosed Jared’s hand out of the way and ran his broad-rough tongue across Jared’s skin again and again. For one insane moment he thought that Jensen must have been tenderizing the meat before he got his jaws around it. He bent his knee and lifted his leg so Jensen had a better angle to bite (he didn’t think about that, he didn’t think about it at all). If he wrapped a hand around his dick and balls it was pure instinct to protect himself from eyes and teeth and Jensen didn’t care anyway. 

Jared put his other hand on Jensen’s back, felt the heat through his fur and closed his eyes. He shouted (ok, it was a scream) when Jensen bit him because the fucker dug down in like he was going to rip himself off a piece and held on with a growl when Jared punched his head in reflex. Milo was whining across the clearing and pacing irritably. 

Jensen pulled back—muzzle bloody—and licked at his handiwork. It hurt and it pulsed and it spread up and down his thigh like fire, skipped over his knee toward his foot and he was curling his toes and his back and trying to wrap himself up into a ball. Jensen whimpered as he licked at the blood welling up out of the marks his teeth had left. 

“Oh Christ,” Jared said, “oh _Christ_.” He was shaking and his voice was vibrating with it. The pain was lacing up through his stomach to his chest and coiling around his heart. When it clogged up in his throat he couldn’t fucking _breathe_ and his ears felt stuffed full of cotton (or rushed full of water) so everything was a dim kind of sound from somewhere else. His back felt like it was snapping into pieces and his ribs were swelling up in his chest and making his skin feel like it was tearing into pieces. He wanted to talk but his throat was closed over and his tongue was rolled up and his nose felt clotted up with snot.

For a brief, crystal clear moment, he was sure he was going to die. Just like this, a transformation gone wrong.

Then something snapped like a stretched rubber band and all of a sudden a rush of relief spread from his forehead straight down to his toes and he sagged loosely against the ground. His oxygen-starved lungs pulled in air like wind tunnels and he stayed like that, eyes closed and lax and just breathing.

\--

First thing he noticed, (as a wolf, of course) was the way that Jensen smelled. It drove him a little crazy in a way that his human brain couldn’t quite compute. It was a primal, belly-deep kind of crazy like he’d been half aware all this time of how very much he liked the way Jensen smelled. Now he just wanted to roll in it, rub their bodies together until his own fur smelled just like that. 

Second thing was the difference in colors—they were muted, almost gray but everything was brighter and easier to see. The moon was like a swollen silver knot that and he figured (but couldn’t be sure) that it must be the reason he felt like there were pins and needles all over his body. It made him kind of crazy like the smell of Jensen did. 

Jensen barked at him and that didn’t make any more sense to him now than it did before. Still a completely foreign language but he climbed up to his four feet because there was supposed to be some kind of fight for dominance now. It was strange, the length and size of his body, the weight of his tail as he tried it out with a wag. His face was stretched out of proportion and his teeth felt unreasonably big even in his new mouth. He looked at Jensen, really looked at him with wolf eyes, and figured that if he’d been born an animal Jensen would be a pretty damn fine looking wolf. Maybe even the kind he’d want to mate with, the kind he’d fight for.

Third was his soul and it came back with a roaring vengeance for having been ignored for those precious few minutes he’d been free of it. When it hit him (everywhere, all at once) he didn’t fight against it but let it take him over. He wanted Jensen—he wanted every little part of him and he wanted him _forever_. It was blinding and numbing and all at once invigorating. He was snarling before he realized the sound was coming from him and Jensen looked paradoxically ecstatic and infuriated to be challenged. 

If he’d had a brain or even common sense to think about it, he would have known that he was no match for an alpha. Even less of a match against a werewolf that had spent the majority of his life training to kill and actually killing. It didn’t make much difference to him as he snarled and growled. Jensen paced a little, conflicted about just outright attacking him and then he gave in and growled back at him, hackles raised and teeth bared.

When he attacked, Jared didn’t stand a fucking chance but he didn’t just roll over either. He snapped back, clawed with his new paws and squirmed and flailed with his new body that twisted and moved easier than his other one did. Jensen let him play at fighting for a minute and then he knocked him down and got his teeth on Jared’s throat with a warning growl and just enough pressure to punctuate the emphasis that the fight was over now.

\--

Turning human again wasn’t half as strange or painful as turning wolf had been. It was just stretching out and felt a little bit like collapsing on his couch at home after he’d been gone all day long (like coming home). Jensen changed over him, breathing heavy and flushed and moving from his throat to his mouth. 

The kiss was a fight too. Tongue and teeth and moans like growls. Jensen was stretched out over his body, knees spread around his hips and Jared touched him everywhere. Back of his neck down his spine to the small of his back and slipped lower (like he’d never quite worked up the nerve to before) hands spread over his ass and pulling him down. His skin was furious hot and he felt so fucking good rubbing against Jared’s skin. It was euphoric and blissful and perfect and Jensen pulled away from the kiss to lean back enough to get his hands on Jared’s chest. 

“This what it feels like for you?” Jared asked. He couldn’t imagine, couldn’t even begin to imagine how Jensen had kept from jumping him every fucking time he saw him if this was what it felt like. His skin was on fire, just jumping with electricity and his only thought (like a need that started in his dick and spread out everywhere else) was to get closer to Jensen. To touch him, kiss him, lick him, smell him and fuck him. He pushed and Jensen moved with him, fell to the side and then onto his back with his legs spread open around Jared’s body. 

He kissed him again, then his neck and ran hands down his chest, over those scars and pressed in against his ribs, down his belly and dipping between his thighs to curl a hand around his dick. Jensen arched into the touch, hands on his back and pulling Jared down against him. 

“Fuck,” Jared whispered; head down against Jensen’s shoulder, “fuck.”

The lube was with his jeans and he reached back for it blindly, popped the lid with shaking hands as Jensen kept petting him. He couldn’t hold still, couldn’t stop pushing down against Jensen—didn’t want to stop touching him—

“Aren’t you supposed to—” He didn’t even know his own damn question. Something about the fight, about who fucked who and if it meant something (if it even did) and all of his better intentions got lost in the pulsing need to get closer. Jensen watched him slicking his fingers up with a curious tilt of his head and when Jared pushed his leg open and up Jensen didn’t fight it. 

He wanted to take his time, he wanted to enjoy it and make sure that Jensen did too but there wasn’t enough time with the crushing need for now-now-now. He pushed his fingers into Jensen’s body and watched how his back arched and his head went back. His neck was bare and Jared surged up to press his mouth against it. He sucked at the tender skin with his teeth scraping at the edges of the red marks he was leaving. Jensen whined. 

He finger-fucked him like that, all caught up in the taste-and-smell of Jensen’s body as it took him in. For a minute, it was enough to rub skin and to know that Jensen was giving this to him. 

“Jared,” Jensen said. His hands were through his hair and at his back, pulling at him and his legs were held open and spread obscenely. This was his alpha (no, just his mate) and the thought of it sank straight down his spine and killed all his attempts at going slow or taking it easy.

Jensen was rolling, over onto his side as Jared pulled back to slick himself up and when Jensen pushed up on his hands and knees it drove Jared crazy in a completely unfamiliar way. There they were in the dirt, fucking like animals and Jensen was—shoulders low, ass up and it was just—

Jared was shivering as he pressed forward, sinking down into Jensen’s body with one hand on his hip and the other caught around his ribs and hanging on with a loose palm and hard fingernails. Jensen groaned and shifted his knees in the dirt, dug his hands in and let out a noise that was more like a whimper than anything. Jared didn’t stop until he was all the way inside and draped across Jensen’s back pressing kisses against his shoulders and nuzzling at his sweaty skin.

“Ok?” he mumbled. (If he had his right mind, wherever it went, he would have been considerate and kind and maybe even cared about anything except _more_.)

“Ok,” Jensen croaked. He was shivering and Jared pressed more kisses against the back of his shoulders to reassure him before he leaned back. His hands couldn’t touch enough of Jensen’s skin, ran down his back and around his sides and down to his thighs as he started to thrust into him. 

_Mine_ he thought, and then _mine, mine, mine_.

\--

Jared woke up with a wolf snuggled in against his side, completely naked, not even vaguely chilly, out in the middle of the forest. He was sticky and dirty and disgusting by every acceptable definition of the word. His thigh ached in a distant and vague kind of way and had a bone-deep satisfaction that he’d never really felt before. It took a few minutes of sorting out his limbs and feelings (and memories) to realize that bitter loneliness that had followed him for years was gone. (Go figure.)

Jensen lifted his head and looked at him, yawned broadly with his wolf jaws and giant tongue curling just like a dog's before he licked him lazily and put his head back down. 

“Hey,” Jared whispered, “I need you human for a minute.” 

It was late-late, after midnight, probably after one and he wasn’t even sure where the rest of the wolves were. With his new sense of smell he knew that they’d been here and then gone but he couldn’t figure out how recently or if they were still hanging around. It didn’t matter that much, anyway, they’d come back when Jensen called them.

Jensen groaned when he was human and pushed himself up to sit next to him, didn’t care that he was naked-assed in the dirt. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” Jared said. He dusted the dirt off Jensen’s knees. “Weren’t you supposed to fuck me? Like—wasn’t that what the whole fight for dominance was about?” It was a stupid thing to be preoccupied about since it was done but he didn’t want to turn around and find out later that he’d fucked up some mystical law or another.

“That doesn’t matter,” Jensen said. He wrinkled up his forehead and went a little pink on the cheeks. “Did you want me to?”

“No—I mean, I just thought that you were supposed to and then you didn’t and…” He felt like a stupid kid trying to work through the sex talk and it seemed stupid when he’d just fucked Jensen in the middle of the woods and could still smell the fantastic stink of sex. 

Jensen was still watching him with that wrinkled-up look of confusion. “I enjoyed it.”

Jared covered his face with his hands. “Oh God,” he mumbled and then cleared his throat and looked at Jensen through his spread fingers. “I did too.”

Jensen’s smile was broad and beautiful and then he leaned down and kissed him on the back of his hands. “You can do it again,” Jensen said quietly.

It hadn’t been a thought until Jensen said that and then it was all he could think about. “Yeah?” he said through his hands across his mouth. "Aren't you like sore or something?"

Jensen shook his head as he moved, knees spread over Jared’s hips and settling down to rub against him with that smile looking strange and still beautiful on his face.

\--

 

They fucked a few times (exactly three times) and when the dawn cracked across the horizon and brought a whole new wave of smells and sensations, Jensen was still laying across his chest, comfortably sweaty and uncomfortably sticking to him. The other wolves were coming back, wearing human skin and human clothes and being polite enough to crack sticks and underbrush to warn him they were coming. He could smell them—didn’t know who was who—as they came forward. 

Jensen pressed a kiss against his throat and nuzzled it into his skin with no sense of shame or hurry to find clothes. The stink of sex was as heavy as fog around them and Jared just wanted to dig a hole and hide in it. (Then again, there was no way they wouldn’t know what he was up to anyway. All things considered.) “It’s ok,” Jensen said quietly. Then he lifted up and the stick and drag of their skin parting made him gasp.

None of the wolves were visible around them but he could hear them and smell them and it made him nervous. Jensen handed him his clothes as he picked his own up off the ground and pulled them on over the filth caked onto his skin. 

“God I’m disgusting,” Jared mumbled as he pulled his jeans up his legs while he was lying on the ground. He lifted his hips up and reached back to dust his ass off as best he could before he yanked them up. Once they were zipped and the button snapped the other wolves were crowding into the tiny clearing.

“No fair,” Erica said, “I want to see your fur.”

Milo was grinning while Christian hung a heavy arm around his shoulders and stuck his tongue out at Erica. “You’ll just have to wait.”

“I bet he’s got long shaggy fur,” Zoe said, “look at his floppy hair now.” She was grinning at him for the first time ever. 

Jensen stayed close to him, held out a hand and helped him up to his feet. The others were shifting from foot to foot and acting as anxious as little kids waiting for the bathroom. He turned his head to look at Jensen and raised an eyebrow to ask for an explanation.

“It’s time to sniff ass,” Chris said, “you’re new and you’re the alpha’s mate.” He was the only one not smiling. Even Alona at his side was grinning at him with a pretty and private kind of congratulations.

“Oh,” Jared said.

Zoe came forward first, stopped two feet away and looked at Jensen before she stepped in close to him. “We don’t sniff ass,” she said quietly. That close he could smell her—just her—and it made sense to him then. She leaned in to sniff at him and then up on her toes to kiss the underside of his jaw. 

The others came one after the other and did the same. Chris was the last one and he stood insolently in front of him, hands shoved into his pockets and frowning at him without even glancing at Jensen. He didn’t kiss him, didn’t sniff him, just stood there and let Jared learn his smell and then moved away.

“Don’t let him bother you,” Aldis said, “he’s always like that.”

Jared smiled and picked up his shirt off the ground. “I’m starving.”

\--

They attacked a buffet (looking like they’d spent the night in the forest fucking) before they headed home. By the time they got to the apartment, Mike was there with Tom and Jared didn’t even make it all the way through the door before Mike was shouting at him.

“You son of a bitch!” he yelled and shoved himself off the couch. Tom winced behind him as his broken ankle was jostled and looked up at Mike with a confused wrinkle of his eyebrows.

Gen poked her head out of the kitchen at the shout. She was holding a bowl of cereal and wearing her pajamas still. “I’m not that upset about the Lucky Charms,” she said quietly.

“After everything you turn around and become a _werewolf_?” Mike demanded from him, “what the hell were you thinking?” His fury was a strange smell in the room and Jared got distracted catching the edges of it with his new nose.

Jensen’s anger was closer, stronger, and it made his gut turn over with something that felt a lot like white-heat and it spread out like fission in his veins and made him think of hours ago in the dirt when he had Jensen pinned under him and panting for more.

Chris moved around the pack and dropped into the chair that nobody ever sat in. He picked up the book he’d left on the table two days ago and opened it up with a great show of disinterest. Mike looked at him with that same fury. “What the hell,” he shouted at Chris, “why the fuck are you okay about this? _You_ , of all people?”

“I did my part,” Chris said, “he’s a big boy and he can make his own fucking decisions.” His tone was icy and acid and terrible, “obviously.”

“Wait, you’re a werewolf?” Gen asked.

“It’s new,” Jared said, “look—I don’t know why the hell you’re upset but get over it. I made my decision and it’s over. It can’t be changed now.” He looked at Chris and then up at Mike’s outraged, blanched white face and _felt_ the anger that Jensen was broiling with. 

“You’re a werewolf?” Gen repeated (louder, louder now). “When exactly were you going to tell me that you were a werewolf?”

Jensen’s growl broke through the air like a tear and the whole pack at his back was shifting around uneasily. One of them dug an elbow into his back and pushed him forward into Jensen. He didn’t know what the fuck he was supposed to do about Jensen’s anger but he curled his arms around him and ducked his head down to rest against his shoulder. “They’re shocked,” he said, “I didn’t tell them what I was going to do. Nobody’s attacking me.”

Jensen didn’t relax but he didn’t growl again.

“Why?” Gen asked. 

Sandy was standing in the mouth of the hallway now, looking sleep-mussed and confused as she looked at all of them. Chris was face first into the book and ignoring everything around him with the stubborn tenacity he stuck with everything. 

“I’m leaving with them,” Jared said, “not forever—just for a few weeks and it would have been too hard to keep up with them as a human. It doesn’t change anything. I don’t even have to shift if I don’t want to. Mike stopped for years.”

“Don’t bullshit them,” Mike said, “you just gave Jensen your fucking soul. You have no idea what he can do to you now.”

“What?” Gen said, “ok—someone with answers explain what the fuck is going on!”

Mike was biting back scathing words and the pack behind him was silent. Jared had two arms around Jensen and it was Chris that threw the book on the table and let out a noise like a growl. “Jared’s a werewolf, the bond between their souls consummated. Mike’s a drama queen that doesn’t even believe in souls.”

“Fuck you,” Mike snarled at him, “you’re going to defend them? _You_?”

“Stop!” Jared shouted at them. His voice was louder now, laced in with a noise that must have sounded just like their low-toned snarls and it echoed back at him like a stranger’s voice. “Just stop. Mike, I didn’t tell anyone that I was going to do this. I know you’re upset but we’ve got bigger concerns. I’m not an idiot—I didn’t do this blind. It’s _over_. Shut up about it or get out.”

Mike went bristling stiff and dug his fingers into his palm as he stared back at him.

“Alphas mate with alphas, Mikey,” Chris said.

“When are you leaving?” Sandy asked. She was watching them from the doorway like she suddenly didn’t even understand what they were saying. “Or are you not going to tell us that either?”

“Tonight,” Jensen said. He looked at her and then at Gen. “I’ll bring him back to you.” He didn’t relax but his hand ran across Jared’s and he turned his head to look at him. “We should take a shower.”

“Yeah,” Jared agreed. They were filthy and he was tired and there wasn’t anything else to say to the disbelieving and hurt faces staring back at them. He let go of Jensen so he could head toward the bathroom and the pack finally moved from behind him. 

Mike was sitting down again, Tom was rubbing his thigh trying to make him calm down. 

Sandy stopped Jensen as he headed past her and whispered a question that made Jensen cock his head and then whisper something back. It was the most civil Jensen had ever been with the girls. When Jared walked past her, Sandy attacked him with a hug that knocked him against the doorway. 

"Hey," he said quietly and she didn't seem to notice or care that he smelled like he'd been rolling in it. He put his arms around her and she held on tight with both arms. "It's okay."

When she let him go she shook her head at him, "you've got one funny definition of okay." Then she looked past him down the short hallway and slapped his arm. "I was right about the sex thing." She gloated at him before she turned back to go back to her room.

Jensen was already in the shower by the time he got to the bathroom and Jared dropped his clothes on the floor and climbed into the tiny tub with him.


	13. (stand up now) 3

By the time he woke up it was already dark again and the entire pack was ready to go. They had been nice enough to make sure he had something to eat and even more polite to make sure that it was completely cooked. Most of it was meat and he devoured it as quickly as he could with human jaws while they went through the motions of saying good bye to their human hosts. 

Chris was carrying a dirty old book bag with dirty initials still stitched into it. His books and his sleeping bag were stuffed down into the bottom of it and the others were wearing the clothes they were going to shove in on top of it once they got somewhere they could change. He shouldered the bag while he wrapped his two arms around Sandy and kissed her good-bye. She squeezed his ass and giggled when he rumbled a growl at her. 

The others were filing past Gen to say good bye and thanks for her hospitality. She shook their hands with one arm across her belly and the other stuck out. Jensen stood at the end of the line of them until the pack was half in the hallway and half still in the tiny apartment. 

"You better come back," Gen said when Jared stopped in front of her for a hug, "and you better know what you're doing."

"I'm coming back," he promised. The rest he wasn't so sure about. There hadn't been enough time to think about it--not really--and now he was headed out with his pack and Jensen at his back shaking hands with Gen like a civilized person. "Where's Mike?" Jared asked.

"He'll meet us," Jensen said. 

Out on the street the smells of the city hit him like being punched in the nose and it took him a few steps to overcome the vertigo of the new sounds and smells all around him. Jensen put a hand on his arm to steady him and gave him a shy kind of sideways smile about it. 

"It keeps getting stronger," Erica said, "I had awful headaches for a week and then I was fine."

"I'll take headaches over being dizzy," Jared said. Then they walked without talking through the city and out into the cover of trees, back where Jared had been changed. The dirt was still scrubbed up from where they'd fucked but the smell had faded in the hours since they'd been here. 

Mike was waiting, sitting against a tree and looking--for all the world--like he'd been out in the trees pouting for most of the day. He looked up when they came into the small clearing and cleared his throat. "Hey."

"Hey," Jared said. He looked at the pack forming a half circle around him and Jensen and how they kept their silence. Chris was the only one looking at Mike and even he had a dark, animal stare. "What's going on?"

"I'm an outsider and an omega," Mike said, "where we grew up, that's enough to kill someone." He didn't bother standing up, just stayed against the tree with his knees crossed and shrugged like it didn't matter. 

Jared looked at Jensen who didn't seem too worried about where they grew up or Mike's status as an omega. He had his hands in his ratty jean pockets while he stepped out of his tennis shoes. Chris was pulling a bag out of the book bag and the others were stepping out of their shoes. "If you're done being dramatic--I think we're getting ready to leave," Jared said. 

Mike shoved himself up to his feet and kicked his shoes and socks off. "I'm not dramatic. You have no idea what you're mated to--what we really are." He pulled his shirt off and picked his shoes up to put into the bag Chris was holding out for them. 

"Yeah, and it mattered so fucking much to you that I didn't know what you 'really were' back when you were bringing me back to feed to your alpha because I'd be good for him. You really need to pick a side of this argument and stick with it." Jared toed his own shoes off and started stripping out of his clothes. The shoes went into one bag that Milo took and the clothes went into Chris' bag. 

"Whatever," Mike said. He was already shifting into wolf form with a kind of tense smugness that he got the last word. 

Jared shoved his pants off with a scowl at Mike before his brain caught up with him and reminded him that he was naked, in the woods, with a group of equally naked werewolves looking at him expectantly. He didn't really think that he'd make it all the way through the trip without them seeing his birthday suit (so to speak) but he didn't expect them all to look so damn gleeful about it. "Ok--this is kind of creepy."

"You've seen us naked," Steve pointed out.

"Come on, show us what you've got," Erica said. She was biting her lip. Zoe was standing (completely naked) right next to her with an amused smirk on her face. 

The threesome seemed inordinately interested in what he was hiding behind the jeans he was holding like his last attempt at modesty. Even Chris--smoking one last cigarette before they headed out--seemed to be entirely too interested for a straight guy. "Come on, alpha bitch, show us."

"This is not cool," Jared said.

Jensen was already naked and seemed just as amused as the rest of them except for a very-nearly grating pride that was all but glowing in the dusky darkness. He held his hand out for Jared's jeans. "They wish they looked as good as you," he said.

That made them all erupt in laughter and congratulations about learning to boast. Jensen glowed with even more pride and Jared tossed his jeans into the bag with everyone else's and tried really hard to not be completely mortified by how they were all eying him now that he was naked. When he bothered to look up at them the comical awed expressions on their faces made him go even redder and he grabbed Jensen to stand behind. "Can we go now? Please?"

"Everything's bigger in Texas," Steve said and they all made agreeable noises.

They started turning into wolves and Jensen turned his head to look at him, "just concentrate on being a wolf," he said quietly, "and let it happen."

\--

Running was the easiest thing he'd ever learned to do. Not that Jared could ever remember learning to walk or talk but it was definitely easier than learning to steer a two-wheeler or a car or even figuring out all the rules involved with the proper usage of commas (or writing motherfucking bibliographies). He'd always been an active kind of guy and he'd taken up running (as a human) in the past few years to burn off his libido so he had a pretty fair stamina. All that time he'd been building up his tolerance for running and all those hot mornings he'd been out sweating while he ran away his urge to hump whatever relatively attractive and willing looking person happened past him he hadn't enjoyed it nearly as much as he did now.

Running, as a wolf, was almost enough to make him forget _everything_ so all that mattered was the sound of the trees they were passing, the smell of the pack around him and the simple joy of moving muscles and joints. 

\--

They stopped twice, once (he assumed but couldn't ask and wouldn't understand the answer anyway) to make sure they were still headed in the right direction. Jared sat on his wolf-rear and watched Erica looking him over and the others keeping up a defensive perimeter around them. He figured (but again, couldn't ask) that they were being protected because they were the two youngest wolves. Sitting there with Erica eying him like that he had a thousand questions about if she knew how to hunt and where they were going and what to expect when they got there. All the thinking he hadn't been doing came back in a thunder of little curiosities and things that probably should have seemed a lot more important to him before he was out in the dirt as a wolf.

Then Jensen barked and the rest of the wolves were moving again. He picked himself up and followed Erica as they paced themselves back up into a steady run.

Second time they stopped was to rest. There was water from the stream and soft dirt to curl up and lay in. Nobody seemed particularly interested in being human out in the wild and since they all grew up speaking their wolf language of ear flicks and barks they could communicate. It wasn't a bother to stay a wolf when you'd been born one but Jared had the insane urge to stretch in a way he just couldn't do in the body he was in.

Christian and Aldis pulled the bags off Milo and Chris. Chris barked and then Zoe followed him away from the cluster of wolves out into the trees surrounding them. Erica nudged against his side and licked at his muzzle with a friendly gesture before she hopped over to where Aldis was rolling and stretching. Milo was sitting on his ass with his tongue hanging out and panting away the mounting heat of the day. Christian was lying on his belly with his paws stretched out in front of him and his ears up.

Erica kept barking at Aldis--loud and playful yips that were getting her nowhere. Mike circled around to look at Erica and she shifted her attention to him. Her tail was wagging behind her as she barked at him and Mike seemed to sigh but he barked back. 

Aldis rolled up onto his feet and barked because he was going to play but Erica ignored him with a wag of her bushy tail and turned her attention back to Mike. Jared whined--didn't know he was going to do it before the noise was rumbling out of his throat--and wagged his own tail. 

What he'd meant to say was 'I want to play'. Aldis wolf-grinned at him and hopped over to throw a shoulder against his and knock him to the side. It was an affectionate enough goad to get him off his ass. Jared didn't know jack-shit about fighting as a wolf but he knew plenty about wrestling around with your friends. His hands were paws but he got teeth instead and Aldis was nice enough not to kick his ass _right away_ but let him figure out a few basic moves before he took him down.

Christian seemed to be laughing at him but it was hard to tell. Jared picked himself up off the ground and shook the dirt out of his coat, circled around to walk off being thrown like that. Erica was doing a good job at holding Mike off from pinning her.

Aldis pranced around happily and then turned back to look at him and Jared barked a goad back at him. He'd never been the smartest damn person in the universe--not the most competitive--but never the smartest and Aldis shivered with happiness at getting another chance to take him down.

Jensen, Alona and Steve came back from scouting around the area to find them all rolling in the dirt biting and scratching and in general making a mess of themselves. Erica had gotten kicked in the face by Aldis and attacked him while Mike had taken over knocking Jared to the ground and going for his throat. Jared was pretty good at getting back on his feet and getting decently good at growling and snarling.

Jensen came back into the clearing with a bark that stopped everything dead and Jared was the only fool still wagging his tail while the others sat down and looked at him attentively. His human brain understood all that--made sense, an alpha was the boss and his pack obeyed him. Jared just didn't have any real inclination to obey Jensen at all. 

He trotted over to him and knocked his head against Jensen's. That earned him a warning snarl that he ignored in favor of brushing his body up against Jensen's. He was taller (made sense) but not broader than Jensen. His own fur was darker but longer and he rubbed against Jensen with a tail flick at his face and circled back around to his face. 

The pack was watching, all in their semi-circle and just staring. Jared ignored them and how Steve and Alona moved out of the way. He was giddy (and stupid, always that) when he barked at Jensen and lifted a paw to scratch at him like a kid pulling at their mother's hand. He wagged his tail again and barked louder.

 _Play with me_. 

For a minute he thought he was going to get stonewalled and then ignored but Jensen circled around him and knocked into his shoulder. Then he sprinted away and Jared followed after him--through the trees, over roots and brambles and crashed through underbrush into another patch of relatively clear dirt. Jensen was shifted into a human and Jared changed back with a grin stretched across his face. 

Jensen grabbed him with two arms, dirty hands against his face and kissed him hard-and-fast and damn near smothering. Jared had good intentions about everything and keeping things platonic and not doing this again but Jensen felt like something fucking perfect rubbing against his skin. He pulled at him, stepped blindly on sticks and dirt until his back hit a tree and then turned so Jensen was pushed against it. Jensen grabbed handfuls of his hair while Jared reached between them to get a palm around their dicks as they pushed-shoved until they were both coming and sagging from the relief of it. 

"Ok," Jared mumbled into Jensen's lips with his own numb-and-still throbbing ones. "Did I do some kind of mating thing just now?" Now that the rush of lust had passed the overwhelming tingle of dizziness was crushing in around his human head.

"Kind of." Jensen kissed him again, hands gentle and hanging onto him to steady the whole world around them, "I just wanted to do this again."

Jared smiled, "guess that's okay." He let go of Jensen and frowned at the sticky come on his hand. "How far away from your father's pack are we?" 

Jensen was staring at his hand like he was confused and then he pointed behind them and led Jared toward the water. "Not far. We could be there by tomorrow but we will probably stop and rest early tomorrow." He watched Jared wash his hands in the water and then scrub at his stomach too. "The others went to hunt for us. Erica says it’s hard to learn to eat raw meat but you need to eat."

Oh, he'd forgotten about that.

"I'll try," he said. When he was mostly clean he stood up again and Jensen nodded his head and turned to the side to shift back into a wolf. Jared turned too and followed him back to the pack.

\--

As it turned out, eating just killed food was the most horrifying experience of his life (above and beyond watching animals kill not-quite-nice humans) and it took all of his willpower not to immediately after start puking it up again. He laid down in the dirt and whimpered without really meaning to while the others reassuringly nuzzled and licked him. Only Mike stayed away and huffed at him.

Even Chris--asshole that he was--licked his muzzle in a reassuring way. 

\--

The pack slept in pairs with (what he kind of figured had to be) the dominant partners taking turns guarding them. The sun was hot through the high leaves of the trees and the unfamiliar feeling of trying to sleep as an animal was nagging at him while he tried to get comfortable in the dug up dirt. Jensen was sleeping next to him (he'd taken first shift) and making low-snarl noises whenever Jared bumped into him. 

Mike was the only one sleeping in a pile of one. Even Steve and Alona and Chris had snuggled up close to one another and were sleeping with the healthy snores of a deep-sleeping wolf. Jared rested his head on his paws and tried to get comfortable again, watched Mike sleeping and tried to work out just why the hell the man was so fucking upset about him becoming a werewolf. 

It could have been a soul thing; he had shouted something about how he'd given Jensen half his soul. Jared didn't understand all of the rules of soul mates but he trusted Jensen wouldn't do something to hurt him and hadn't ever done anything to him without his consent. (Of course, he'd done plenty to him when Jared was consenting without knowing what the hell he was agreeing to.) The way he looked at it, he was far more likely to be eaten by this alpha bastard that they were going to challenge and kill than hurt by anything that Jensen would do to him. 

He fell asleep trying to sort out how he felt and how much of it had to be that he finally had his soul mate and wasn't fighting against it anymore. (That had to do something to him; it had to.)

\--

Waking up was more raw meat to choke down and fresh water from a stream and the pack watching him with amused sounded barks and yips that he didn't really understand. Jared understood when they were ready to head out again. Zoe shifted human and hooked the bags around the wolves that were carrying them. (Chris and Aldis this time.) 

Then they ran, the stronger wolves at the edges and him and Erica in the middle keeping pace. They didn't run as far or as fast as they had the night before and they all stopped before the dawn to scout out a place to get water and sleep. Jensen went with the hunting party to go find food for everyone.

\--

Jared didn't know a lot of the context of years ago and after he stopped and thought about it (in split seconds between wrestling with Erica and Alona) he didn't know a damn thing about Chris. Not really--he knew that he'd been kicked out for being an ass and he knew that he was the most human of them. Hell, Chris was the only one he'd ever seen appreciate anything remotely human like books and movies. Even Mike for all that he didn't believe in soul mates and had left behind the life he'd been raised in to immerse himself in humanity never could have sat and read a book of poetry. 

So he didn't know the context but he knew that there but not what. When Chris barked at Jensen the rest of the pack were caught between sighs and moving into a defensive perimeter around the two of them. Jensen growled back, still licking dinner off his muzzle. Chris kept making noise, all barks and pacing and whines and nagging after Jensen who ignored him and then snarled back. 

Jared was being partitioned off, separated from the two of them, protected behind a wall of fur and tense wolves. He could feel Jensen's annoyance, see how his lips were pulling away from his long teeth and then the retorting bark of Chris' disrespect and objection. Alona whimpered and crawled in through the circle of wolves toward her brother. She stayed low to the ground but by Chris like she was agreeing with him.

He barked from where he'd been sectioned off but he meant to ask what the fuck was going on. They must have understood what his noise meant because Christian turned back to whine an answer at him that meant absolutely nothing. He could have been asking for fucking bacon for all that it meant something to Jared. He pushed his paws against the ground and lifted his body up--concentrated on that familiar feeling of his human body and felt the shudder of the change going through him as he straightened up. "Hey," he said across the wolves that were guarding him, "what's going on?"

Chris looked at him like he was his personal savior and shoved himself up the same way that Jared had, stumbling back on to his human feet in the debris of the forest floor. He was raving angry, eyes half-hollow and he pointed his hand toward the deeper wilderness. "It's suicide to walk into the pack's territory--fuck challenging the alpha, they'll kill us as soon as we pass into their lands. _That alpha_ has zero tolerance for outsiders and you," Chris said as he looked at Jensen, "of fucking people should know that." 

Mike was human now and Christian was growling low in his chest at the perceived threat against his alpha. Jensen was changing, crouching low to the ground with his fingers in the dirt, on the balls of his feet and looking like he was waiting for a reason to jump at Chris and rip his throat out. "It's a stupid idea," Mike said.

"Just walking in there blind is a stupid idea--weren't you listening? He'll kill you. He'll kill every single one of us and his sycophantic little followers won't have enough brains to think for themselves." Chris looked back at Jensen crouching in front of him as a human. "He sold my sister to kill you."

Alona whimpered again, still a wolf with her head down and her body pressed close against Chris' leg. Her tail was swept up close to her body but not tucked under her. 

Christian changed, shoulders knotted up and tense. "He's right," he said, "she knows every way in and out of the lands--think about all the times she--"

Jensen looked in toward the trees Chris had pointed through and drew in a heave of breath. "You can draw her out?"

Alona barked an answer and Chris nodded to echo it. That seemed to mean something to the whole pack and Jensen because he looked out through the trees again and then nodded his head. Chris was shifted back into a wolf and darting out and away before Alona even had the time to pick herself up again. She went after her brother with a imperative bark like: _hey, wait up_!

"What the hell?" Jared asked, "who are they going to find?"

"Their mother," Mike said. He shook his head and shifted back into a wolf to settle himself in for sleeping away the rising heat of the day. Christian was already a wolf again and being drawn into a puppy pile with Milo who was licking him attentively just like he'd been through some hard battle or another. 

"Their mother?" Jared repeated, "that just clears up everything."

Jensen stayed human--at least--and stepped through the wolves to get close to him. He touched him with warm and curious fingertips, all delicate and uncertain. "What did Chris tell you about our bond?"

"That you can use it to get stronger and that it's permanent," Jared said. He looked over at Mike and the other pairs settling down. It felt naked and strange to be talking in front of them but even the passing modesty of hiding behind trees would have done nothing but slightly muffle the noise of their voices. "What else should I know?"

Jensen nodded and then he furrowed up his forehead and frowned. "Do you trust that I would never steal from you? From your soul without your consent?"

"Yes," Jared said.

"The stronger I get, the weaker you will be. The effect is only temporary but even if I only take from you for moments you will be weak and if I take too much you will be defenseless." He was picking his words with deliberate care of a politician. If it had been anyone else they might have been trying to sell him something, trying to sugar coat it and make it pretty. Jensen looked right at him with words that were honest and terrifying. 

"That makes sense," Jared said, "but I mean--you'll be there to protect me and the pack'll be there." He made a vague motion with his hand at the other wolves that were pretending not to be listening in.

Jensen smiled at him again and leaned forward to put hands against his chest, slid them up to his shoulders, around his neck and lifted himself up on the balls of his feet and kissed him at the edge of his lips. Jared turned into the touch, pressed their mouths together. He put his hands on Jensen's sides, above his waist and below his ribs and rubbed his thumb across the tail end of the scars there. "We should sleep," Jensen said.

Yeah, they really should. They shifted down into wolves and Jared curled himself around Jensen so he could lick his face with his long-wolf-tongue and Jensen closed his eyes and seemed to relax into the affection just how Jared always melted into hugs.

\--

Jared didn’t know what he was expecting—definitely not that the kind of mother that his mother was. There were no baking mothers out in the wild that dished out cookies as a cure-all for everything that ailed you but he just hadn’t been expecting something like what Chris’ mother really was. (And wasn’t Mike just smug as shit about that too.) It was hours later, after mid-day when the sun was lazing lower in the sky and making the earth they were lying on nice and baked-warm. Jensen was snoozing without sleeping deeply and Jared was trying to get comfortable in the body that still felt foreign to him. 

Chris broke through the underbrush with brambles in his fur and Alona came after him whimpering after him. He turned his head and barked at her and got a growl in return. Then he flopped himself out on the ground, rolled in the dirt, stretched and wuffed out a breath as he went still. Steve got up from where he’d been trying to sleep in his pile of one and stretched out next to Chris and went back to sleep. Alona was the last one, standing there with another whimper before she settled in next to them and seemed to protest one more time before lying down.

It was a few hours after _that_ when Jensen’s snarl woke him up. He was shivering in a pile of one (it was just lonely and cold by himself) and then suddenly surrounded by his pack. They were all growling low and constant like an old car idling badly. He stood up and looked across their backs to where a bloody wolf was stepping through the spread of trees into their clearing.

It was caked with blood, favoring one side more than the other and stopped short in front of Jensen. Alona was whimpering pathetically to the side and Chris was standing outside the growling circle but not approaching the newcomer. Jensen sniffed at the air and then barked at the wolf before turning to look at Chris who didn’t seem to notice or care that anything was strange.

The wolf shook its coat and flung the still wet blood against the trees and then sat down and lifted a paw to lick at it. The smell of blood was overwhelming and the strangely familiar twinge of it made him anxious. He was whining, a low and constant noise like a terrible drone as the other wolves stood guard around him. Erica was trying to comfort him with steady licks against his face but he couldn’t stop making that noise because the familiar smell of the blood made him think that something had happened and—

Jensen barked again and the defensive line broke around him, swelled forward and took up seemingly relaxed places that were still strategically placed around him. Jensen came back and licked his face—on his muzzle and up by his eyes and nuzzled at him to calm him down. Jared stretched his arms out toward him—feeling the change of his body ripping through him and instead of paws he had hands that caught in Jensen’s hair and held on. In human form the anxiety faded into a dizzying whirl of vertigo. 

Chris was human too, across the clearing and grabbing the bag of their clothes from where it had been dropped. He found a pair of shorts to pull on and then one of Jared’s shirts that he threw over at the new wolf and then Jared’s boxers which he threw at him. “I’m your translator,” Chris said. “Jensen’s not going to turn this close to his father’s territory.”

The new wolf shifted, body pulling all the blood-wet hair in and leaving bloody skin behind. She (Chris’ mother?) picked up the shirt with a raised eyebrow and then pulled it on over her head and wore it like a dress. Her face was bloody but she wiped it on the sleeves and then she looked at Chris. “Why are you here?” she asked. Then she held out her hands toward Alona who stopped whimpering to hop forward and danced around the woman happily before getting petted and stretching up to lick at the woman’s fingers. 

“To kill that son of a bitch,” Chris said. He pointed across the clearing to where Jared was standing up. “Jensen’s challenging him but we needed a way to get to the council clearing before his followers killed us for trespassing. That’s Jensen’s mate, he’s our secret weapon.”

The woman nodded, “does Jensen’s mate have a name?”

“Jared,” Chris said like it didn’t even matter.

“Jared I’m Sam,” the woman said, “Chris and Alona’s mother.” Then she turned back to Chris. “I know I raised you better than this. You were banished—for all I knew you were dead and you’re going to stand there and tell me how you’re going to kill the alpha?” Her voice was rough but she smiled at Chris and held out her arms to hug him whenever he stepped up close and wrapped both his big arms around her small body. Her hands left streaks of drying blood on his pale skin and she touched his face and smiled all the sweeter at him. “That’s my boy.”

Jensen barked.

“Yes I can get you in. If you want to get there before we’re noticed we should hurry. Sooner or later someone’s going to notice the body I left behind.” She looked at the wolves and smiled at Mike. “Mikey!” she said and held out her hands toward him.

“Yeah, he’s got a boyfriend who was kidnapped by some idiots so he’s with us for this hunt. Jensen kicked him out of the pack a while back,” Chris said. He joined his mother in scratching behind Mike’s ears and smoothing fingers through his hair. 

“Of course he did,” Sam said, “and you’re probably better off that way. You’re a sweet boy.” She smoothed her palm over his head and then straightened up again. “Does Jared know that Jensen’s going to suck his soul out of him?”

“Yeah,” Jared said, “Jared knows that.” Jensen knocked against his leg with the side of his body and watched Chris and his mother stand in a tight little cluster. “Who’s blood is that?” It wasn’t important (he didn’t think) but he wanted to know why it smelled so oddly familiar to him.

Chris brought his hand up to his nose and sniffed it, “my father’s,” he said and then looked at his mother with narrow eyes. “You finally did it?”

“He was trying to stop me,” Sam said, “even if he couldn’t have kept me in there he would have gone and told the alpha where I’d gone and that you were outside our territory. I assumed that if you were stupid enough to come back here after you’d been banished that you were here for a reason. Besides,” Sam added with a shrug of one shoulder under the too-large shirt. “He had it coming for a long time.”

There were questions in that—about soul mates and the cavalier murder of them, how Chris didn’t seem to care that his mother was smeared everywhere with his father’s blood. The news seemed to work through him like bitter relief and his face was twisted up between flat and a slight smirk. Sam reached down to rub her fingers through Mike’s fur again and then looked back at Jared.

Chris looked over at him too and then cleared his throat, “Jensen?”

Jensen eyed the rest of the pack, looked over at Christian the longest and Christian came and licked Jensen’s muzzle. The others followed him, each stepping up to pledge their allegiance to him—everyone but Mike and Alona. Even Chris came over and rubbed his fingers through Jensen’s fur. When they finished Jensen barked and Chris face split into a cruel smirk.

“We’re going?” Jared asked. In his chest his heart was pounding at his ribcage, beating against it relentlessly as if it wanted to spring out through bone and skin and into the open air. His skin was tingling with goose flesh and he was all at once aware of the strange leeching feeling that started somewhere behind his belly button and spread all up through his body. “Oh,” he mumbled.

Sam was watching him from the head of the clearing, still wearing the blood of Chris’ father. “Turn back into a wolf. You’ll last longer that way.” Then she pulled the shirt off and through the blood he could see the wide-swaths of scars covering her skin. All across her ribs and breast and back there were long marks and up at her shoulder it was a ring of teeth marks that looked as if they must have dug in so deep they were trying to sever her whole arm. She shifted back into a wolf

Chris looked at him again, “You’ll be okay, Jared.” It wasn’t much of a promise before Chris was turning into a wolf again too. 

Jared pushed his shorts down—wondered at the leaden feeling of his limbs—and concentrated on fur, a wet nose and a tail. Once he was on all fours again Jensen licked him and whined against his fur in a gesture of reassurance and apology. Jared licked him back and forced his muscles and bones to move. It was easier this way, to pace himself into a trot and follow the pack as they headed out. 

They were crossing an invisible line, from the relative safety of unclaimed lands and straight into the heart of Jensen’s father’s territory. The smell changed first, the unmistakable mark of a pack that was large enough to ward off even the most ignorant and arrogant animals. They were all huddled close into a line, following the footsteps of Sam as she lead them through narrow trails. 

Out, around him, he could hear the motion of the leaves in the trees and smell the dirt their paws churned up. The motion of walking was calming to him, dulling the ache of having energy pulled straight out of the center of him. It eased his doubts into little bubbles that popped softly and became nothing but a vague memory. He felt dull and stupid and lethargic—there was a body against his side that pushed him on, held him fast in a steady walk when he would have stumbled without something to lean against.

When they broke through the scratched and scarred trees into a clearing that had been rubbed down to packed dirt Jared was so tired he could barely find the energy to fall to the ground. It was hard—uncomfortable—smelled like blood and piss and fear. He thought (somewhere in the back of his brain) that this must have been where the alpha brought them to kill the deserters and the doubters. 

There were bodies around him—his pack protecting him—and he wanted to lift his head to see where Jensen was and what he was doing. He could hear the low snarl of his mate and feel his anger and rage like something busting inside of _him_. It cracked in the air and an answer snarl brought the thunder of wolf-paws bearing down on them. The pack around him was standing proud and defiantly but he could smell the shiver of their fear. 

His eyes were closed and his body was just as loose as butter (defenseless, completely defenseless) but he concentrated on Jensen and just that. Not here, not like this, but away from here when he’d been wearing those sunglasses he won from the arcade game with a stupid grin on his face.

In the pizza place when he ran his thumb across the bracelet on Jared’s wrist. He thought of the touch of his skin in the morning before reality came crashing down. Four years ago when he’d snuggled himself in tight against a wolf without knowing what the fuck he was doing but liking the smell of fur against his nose anyway. He thought maybe he always knew it was going to come to this (even when he was only about four years old) and maybe he’d always-always loved Jensen. 

The pack was whining around him, and Jared snarled from the ground. He didn’t have the energy to stand—didn’t have the energy to fight but he had that snarl in his lungs and pushed it through his throat and rumbled it out through the gaps in his teeth. He snarled at his pack for doubting Jensen, at the wolves that were circling them for the threat, at the alpha because he _hated_ him so fucking much.

When the pack shifted their stance he could see through their legs at the monster that had imprisoned his own people—just a wolf, just a little larger than Jensen with the same darkened fur and the same large paws and huge teeth displayed behind pulled back teeth. He was nothing but a wolf. 

_Kill him_ , Jared wanted to shout, _just fucking kill him_. 

His pack around him started growling, barking and snapping at the wolves that were trying to press in and intimidate them. They made noise in praise of their alpha, in support and in defiance of fear. 

If he’d been human he would have smiled at them, would have run his hands through their fur and scratched their ears. The strange pride of it coiled up in his belly and chest and surged through him like renewed strength. Across the clearing, Jensen yelped.

Jared looked around the circle of them guarding him, found Chris and barked at him—meant to say something like _kill him, kill that bastard_ but he had no idea what the hell he’d said. He was just tired—so, so _tired_.


	14. (stand up now) 4

In his nightmare (because it had to be a nightmare, a soupy, slow, sticky kind of nightmare), there was a yelping noise through the trees. The trees weren’t really trees because they were hairy like legs, thick legs of human-sized wolves. Past the trees (or legs), running along the packed-down dirt of the clearing that smelled like piss and fear and wet-wolf-fur, he could see the scuffle of feet and the deep, jarring scrape of claws into the earth. In his nightmare (but not in real life because he never quite felt like he was floating on the stretched-tight and tiny string in real life) he could smell blood everywhere. Blood on the ground, blood in fur, blood rimming wide eyes and flushing gums and skin and pumping through his own body all at once and it was nauseating. 

And in the world that wasn’t quite real (no, not at all) he thought he could hear thunder shaking the ground. That thunder was so fucking loud, like a cyclone all around him, snarling up octaves and getting vicious and impatient and terrible as it whirled and whirled and whirled around. There was blackness at the edge of that noise, bearing in at all sides, narrowing down what he could see like neatly smothering him into the pitch. 

Across the way, past those furry tree-like legs, he could still see the blur of fur moving too fast to tell one from the other. He could hear the screaming yelp of one animal and the meaty-wet noises of jaws working through fur and flesh until it dug in straight down to bone. It was a wonder to him, as he lay there on that tiny-stretched-string with the smothering blackness and the sudden heaviness pressing his body into the hard dirt so his lungs barely felt like they could expand enough to draw in oxygen. One of the trees moved, a tail swished and there was a familiar stink close to him one that some part of him knew he could trust even if he didn’t like it and then a snuffling noise was against his face but he couldn’t see it. 

Something wet crossed over his eyes and everything was black in that moment so he thought he must have died (in his nightmare, nothing he was worried about) but then it was gone again and the rumbling thunder was right against his face, speeding-speeding-speeding around that cyclone until it burst into the air so loudly that it seemed like tree limbs snapping and crashing down to crush him. 

A whistling whine caught in the circling thunder and then the familiar smell was moving away, taking those furry tree legs with him, dashing across the open area. It seemed like such a stupid idea—seemed like—out of nowhere there were wolves, giant, furious, feral wolves. They came from all sides, all at once and—

\--

Jared woke up. 

A light was winking at him from over his head. His tail felt weighed down and his fingers felt curled over. For a second (just the length of a breath) he thought how stupid it was of him to think he’d have a tail and fingers at the same time. He meant his paws—

\--

Jared woke up.

Something was moving behind him. It sounded like the grating of metal pots against metal like the noise a pan made against the electric stove burners back at his apartment. Something was whistling in the distance and that blinking light over his head was giving him a one-eyed wink again. There was the smell of water, blood and someone whimpering low-and-constant.

He wanted to lift his head, wanted to know who it was and knew without having enough thought at all to know that he should be helping them.

\--

Jared woke up.

The winking light was gone (good bye, good bye) but he could see the distant round red glow of something familiar. The stink of blood was watered down now, thrown out and mixing with the dirt just beyond where he was laying. Across the idle little breeze he thought he could smell nicotine and tobacco and let that drift him back to sleep again.

\--

Jared woke up.

There was sunlight choking in through what looked like (from his perspective) a door but smaller and rounder and for one strange and delusional moment he thought he must have been transported straight into the Shire because this was where the hobbits lived. He closed his eyes again and opened them and felt the spongy softness of a mattress (or something) beneath him. It didn’t smell like him and it didn’t smell like Jensen but it had the faint smell of a slightly familiar stink. Almost like Chris but different and he whined at the strangeness.

He pushed his elbow against the mattress and shoved himself up. He expected fur but he found skin and twisted-crooked pair of boxers pulled almost all the way up his hips. The air was cool as it caught on the sweat wrinkling his skin where he’d been laying and snuck up under his soaked hair. There was a bowl of water on the ground next to him and next to it a bowl of what looked like meat that had been charred into something approximating well-done. He picked up the stick that was stabbed through one of the chunks and brought it up to sniff at it. 

All at once he was ravenously hungry and he gnawed at it with his human jaws and human slowness. His stomach ached and rolled at the smell of meat and before he quite realized what he was doing he was on four paws with his snout pushed into the bowl using his wolf mouth and impatient wolf food to devour what had been left for him. When it was gone and the bowl tasted only like wood and nothing like food at all he moved onto the water and lapped it up until all that was left was the stripes of his spit where his tongue had been. 

He pulled back as a human, shifted to tug his boxers right again and looked around. Behind him there was a tree and walls and over his head there were tiny little holes in what must have been the ceiling that winked light at him. Against the wall there were pans and bowls and cups that were dusty from disuse. On his other side there were shelves stacked with books almost all the way up to the short ceiling. Piles of blankets and clothes that looked too small to be for adults, folded up jeans and dresses that must have belonged to a child. A few scattered toys were in a box next to those clothes and they looked as dusty and unused as the cups and bowls and pans against the opposite wall.

“It lives,” Sam said from the squat little door. She was wearing nothing but her human skin with the wide-ugly scars twisting all around it. Her hair was long and curled into knots as she ducked through the door and looked at the empty bowls by his bed. 

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” Jared asked. He was exhausted, just _exhausted_ and heavy with it. The longer he sat up the more he wanted to lay back down but the way she looked at him made him uncomfortable. “What?”

“You really have no idea, do you?” she said softly. Then she came over and crouched down to look at him. Her hands were rough when she touched his cheek and his forehead and pulled at the soft skin under his left eye. “Let me get the boys. They’ll take you and show you.”

Jared frowned at her and it seemed to amuse her if the grin across her face was anything to go by. “Why can’t you just tell me?”

“Because I’m not the one that can explain this to you. Just relax, let me get the boys.” She went to the door and shifted down into a wolf. Her howl was long and urgent and then she turned back to look at him and sat on her ass in the doorway with a strange wag of her tail and what looked like a grin on her wolf-face.

Milo, Christian and Aldis rushed through the door and shifted up into their human forms as soon as they saw him sitting up. Christian was grinning like a fool for the first time Jared could ever remember, Aldis looked like he was going to burst into tears and Milo reached a hand down and yanked him up into a hug.

“What the hell?” he said, “what happened? Where’s Jensen?” He was just so tired but they smelled like Jensen and all at once he wanted nothing at all more than he wanted to see his mate. He wanted to wrap himself around Jensen and make it better. His skin ached for it and his chest started just _hurting_. 

“We’ll take you,” Milo said. He looked at the other two who were still smiling and looking like they were going to cry. Without any words (at least out loud) they were all pulling at him, lifting him up on jelly legs and wrapping their arms around him to keep him up. Christian smelled the most like Jensen with the soft puff of blood at the edges of it and Jared started whimpering (in human form) without even intending to do it.

Getting through the doorway was an interesting feat and he didn’t have enough energy to do more than pull his arms in as tight as he could. They ducked him down and got him through and out into the middle of—nothing. There were huge trees towering over their heads. Everything was covered in leaves and there were no paths to follow. He was whimpering while they (basically) carried him through the nothing and back toward something that smelled familiar.

“We couldn’t put you together,” Milo said at his side. “It looks bad.”

“It is bad,” Aldis said.

“It is bad,” Milo conceded, “but we couldn’t put you together. We had to make sure that you were going to come back out of it.” He shifted his shoulders under Jared’s arm and they came into a smaller clearing that butted up against the base of a hill. Down and around that there was a dug out opening of a den even smaller than the house he’d been in before. 

Jared could smell Jensen from the mouth of it and the blood that had been curling around the edges of Milo’s scent. He pulled away from them, shifting as he fell forward and hit the ground with paws and a tail and his boxers falling down his wolf legs. The weariness was less like this, but the whining drone of worry was louder and needier. He ducked his shoulders in through the narrow opening and followed along the curve inside that took him into a larger pocket of space with no light but the lonely flicker of a lantern burning against one wall. Jensen was lying in a huddled heap in the back of the room with Erica, Zoe and Steve licking at his fur. The smell of his blood was all that Jared could scent in the air—except their fear and he dug his nails down into the dirt. There was motion to the side and Alona was leaning away from lantern in her human form with her eyes wide and strange as she looked at him.

“We thought you were dead,” she said softly, “he—he has no idea how much of your soul he’s taking. We didn’t think you’d live through it.” She touched him with her human fingers and he snapped at the kindness and at the pack that was crowded around his mate. Jensen was breathing with shallow whines and there was blood caked in his fur, mixed with dirt and he whined at it as he moved closer. Erica whimpered at him and he snapped back at her (she was only trying to help) so Zoe pushed her mate away from him.

“The worst of it’s on his neck. He should be dead.” 

Jared ducked down on his belly, felt the heat of Jensen and whined at him, tongue brushing across his muzzle, tasting unfamiliar blood there and then moving down. He nosed at his fur until he found the bloody wound down his neck toward his shoulder. He ran his tongue across it, tasted his mate’s blood and heard his whimper pitch a little higher. Jared licked at it again-and-again-and-again. The dirt and the dried blood. Jensen’s fur and fresh blood. He licked it all with single-and-simple minded worry. 

Mostly he was just so fucking tired, his eyes got heavy and closed while he licked at the wound—again and again and again.

\--

Jared woke up in the dark. The pack was close enough he could smell them, but Jensen was right against him and the taste of his blood was still on Jared’s tongue. The awful whimpering noise had stopped at last and as close as he was he could hear the wind-tunnel expand and contract of Jensen’s wolf-lungs breathing. He turned his head toward the sound, licked at the same place he’d been licking at before he fell asleep and found the blood was less and wagged his tail against the dirt. 

“Don’t get too excited,” Chris said from behind him. He was human and sitting cross legged by the lantern. He had a cigarette in one hand and the round red tip of it catching on the skin of his knuckles and making them look like a milky pale apparition. “He’s got a lot more boo-boos that need licked.”

Jared turned enough that the smell of Jensen was crowding his nose and caught the new smell of Chris’ blood. When he stood up, Chris put the cigarette up to his lips and pulled on it, the glow caught his eyes and the gash across his forehead and up into his hair. Jared stood in front of him and whined—the pack outside hadn’t been hurt when he found them—and Chris dropped his cigarette and blew smoke at him. 

“He was killing you,” Chris said, “his father was killing him. I killed the runner ups.” 

It was all bravado and Jared let him talk if he needed to. He leaned in and ran his tongue across Chris’ human skin. The blood was different like this. The taste of salt-sweat against his tongue seemed wrong and he had to keep the whine in his throat from sneaking out along the roof of his wolf mouth. He licked at the gash and Chris let him do it for a moment. Then he pushed at his neck and Jared snarled at that, teeth exposed and snapping at the air where Chris’ hand had been.

“Fine, but if you’re licking me, do it somewhere that needs it.” He shifted away from the wall and the smell of his blood was stronger. There, on his flank, just below his ribs, there were teeth marks that seemed to dig so far into his flesh that whatever had attacked must have been hoping to tear him in half. Jared whined at that and ran his tongue across the raised ridge of dried blood. It cracked under his tongue and bled fresh. “Fuck,” Chris spat and his body broke out in sweat. His hurt came as a curious smell and Jared whined harder for it.

Chris laid his head against his arm on the ground and rolled onto his belly so Jared could see the other scratches and marks all along his back. The weak glow of the lantern caught the blackened bruises and raised scabs and he whined again. He wanted to demand why the fucker hadn’t let the others look after him and Chris seemed to understand that was his question.

“Jensen was worse,” he said. His fist hit the ground as he bit back another curse and Jared lifted his head away from him. The pack was outside the open mouth of the dark little den and he barked loud enough it echoed off the walls. 

The others came in again, filled the limited space with their bodies. Milo and Christian and Aldis crowded around him and barked at Chris who mumbled mean shit against his arm and hissed when they started licking at his wounds. Alona came in and laid next to her brother to lick his face with a kind of smug bark that sounded like she was reproaching him for being an idiot.

The others were over by Jensen, nosing through his fur to find the scratches and gashes. Jared licked at Chris one last time before he stepped back and went over to lay down by Jensen and licked his face. He whined at him and got no response but a low whimper. The others were working on healing him and Jared was tired again. Just so-fucking-tired.

\--

Jared woke up to find Jensen nosing at him. There was nobody else in the den this time, just Jensen standing and looking down at him and Jared barking before he realized that he couldn’t shout ‘you’re alive!’ with a wolf throat. Jensen seemed to understand what he meant because he licked his face a few times and then headed toward the exit of the den. Jared shoved himself up and followed after him, out into the early-morning chill of the air and down along the trail that Jensen must have remembered from childhood to the shallows of a creek that ran deeper the farther you travelled along it. 

Jared turned human as soon as they stopped, feet in the water and crouched low enough to get his hands on Jensen. His fur was thick with blood and crunchy from it. It didn’t matter because he was alive and as soon as Jared touched him changing into his human skin. The gash that had seemed huge on his wolf neck was still reddened skin on his human body, starting at the edge of his jaw and going straight down across his shoulder toward his heart. There were other marks—teeth and claw marks—that were fainter red and pink. The blood caked on his fur left ugly brown stains on his skin and there were bruises on his face and arms and sides from the fight.

“Thank you,” Jensen said to him. 

Something screeched in the trees and Jensen didn’t even flinch at the noise but Jared jumped. He had his hands on Jensen’s human skin and it wasn’t enough. He pressed his mouth down against Jensen’s, pushed until Jensen’s mouth was open enough he could push his tongue inside and slid his arms around him to pull him up against his body. Jensen’s hands on his skin were unsure and too soft. 

“What’s wrong?” Jared asked. As soon as he asked he thought it must have been the stupidest question he’d ever asked. Jensen had just killed his father, he’d just nearly died and there was Jared pressing hard kisses against his mouth. “Are you okay?”

Jensen wrapped his arms around him and held him there—naked skin to naked skin.

“Hey,” Jared said. He ran his hands across the red marks and dark bruises down Jensen’s back, “what is it? Tell me what you need.” He touched his face and neck and slid his hands through his short hair and tried to make Jensen look at him but he wouldn’t.

“I want to leave this place,” Jensen said. He pressed a kiss against Jared’s neck and then stepped back away from him. “That’s what I want. I want to leave this place.” The water at their feet gurgled as it went around their ankles and the animals moving in the forest and trees seemed as loud as planes flying over their heads. Out there, just beyond where he could see, there were more wolves that were all waiting for their new alpha and he had no fucking idea who they’d been obeying while Jensen laying nearly dead. 

“Ok,” Jared said, “ok. We’ll leave.”

It wasn’t that easy and Jensen knew that as he looked at him with a shake of his head but he didn’t say it. 

\--

There was blood still soaked into the dirt in the clearing where Jensen had challenged his father. Jensen took him there and they stood on their human feet over the marks that Jensen had dug up when he killed his father. Chris had fought the alpha’s top followers there and Mike had followed him into that fight neither of them had any hope of winning. The two of them had killed four others while Jensen killed his father and all that was left was an empty clearing.

“You’ve seen Chris’ mother.” Jensen asked. He kicked at the scuffed up dirt with his toes and then looked at him. 

“Yeah,” Jared said. 

“She was human once,” Jensen said but didn’t bother to add: _she was dragged here, she was raped here_ , “she is infamous here. She never wanted to be a wolf but her soul mate kept her here against her will. He would steal from her soul to keep her obedient but she would always overcome him and run away. She took Chris with her and every time they brought her back she would be brought here and punished. My father put those marks on her. Once he told her that if she attempted to leave again he would order me to kill her son.”

The trees that ringed the clearing were scarred from claws and teeth and the violence they had witnessed. He wanted to say _but you wouldn’t have_ , he wanted to believe that it was the truth but Jensen would have killed Chris if his father commanded it, back then. “So she stayed?”

“Yes.” Jensen walked over to thickest tree and ran his hands across the deep scars in the wood. “Mike’s parents helped her soul mate bring her here. They were the alpha’s most loyal followers. They went out with the young wolves that could not find their soul mates here and helped them bring them back here to be turned and mated.”

Jared shifted on his feet and crossed his arms over his bare chest. His chest hurt from the ache in Jensen’s words and the way he paced the circle with his fingers on the bark of the hateful trees. “Oh.”

“Milo killed them,” Jensen said. He said the words without emotion, just as hollow as Chris’ eyes were when he sank back into this past. There was nothing but hate in this place and Jared grabbed at Jensen’s arm when he passed him again, fingers caught in shallow scratches on the back of his arm just above the elbow. Jensen looked at him, eyes catching and reflecting light at him.

“Stop,” Jared said. He didn’t want to know and it was selfish. It was so fucking selfish that it burned in his chest but he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know who had died here, who had lost mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers in the fight that had passed here and before. He didn’t want to know about the hell that Jensen grew up in. He just wanted to drag him away from it, pull him all the way back down to fucking Texas and wrap him up in the way things could-have-been-should-have-been. 

Hell, he’d feed Jensen cookies for the rest of his fucking life if he could bring himself to believe that they’d actually cure anything.

“We’ll leave,” Jared said, “we’ll leave right now.”

There were wolves all around them, moving on quiet paws with hunched shoulders and staring eyes. He could barely hear them in the forest around them but he could smell them; the damp of their fur and the dirt clinging to their skin.

Jensen moved up against him, hand down and head tipped to the side. They were naked to the fucking skin and Jensen was furious hot and to any other person in the world (except him, except Jared-his-soul-mate who could _feel_ the truth) he was pissed. In the quiet-quiet space between them Jensen’s eyes looked uncertain and his lips looked drained-pale. 

“We can leave,” Jared said again.

“I don’t want you here,” Jensen said. If he meant _because you’re not safe_ or even _I don’t want you to see me as an animal, like this_ he didn’t bother to add it. He just looked away from him (but it hurt, it hurt in Jared’s chest so it had to hurt in Jensen’s) and then he dipped forward, slid into his wolf form and _howled_.

\--

There were wolves everywhere—coming in out of the trees, surrounding him in his naked-fucking-skin and surrounding Jensen. They were strangers, skinny and ragged and _starved_ looking. They sat in pairs with pups between them and watched him with punched-blackened-eyes that made his skin crawl. Their bodies were huge, human-sized in wolf-shape but there was nothing at all _human_ in their stares. No, they were trading their quiet judgment with ear flicks and nervous licks and Jensen went a circle around him before he snapped at his thigh and then shoved him with his body. 

_I don’t want you here_.

A howl started at the edge of the circle and it went around—running faster-and-faster. Howls, yips and barks and then claws and paws digging into the ground. He had no idea what the fuck they were getting so worked up about but—

The pack, his pack, came then. They broke through the ring of strangers, snarling and snapping. Chris went for one wolf’s throat and it was only his sister that darted in between them that got his attention settled back on Jared. Jensen looked at the pack—his pack, their pack—and then back at the ring of strange wolves. 

Everyone was staring at him and he had no fucking idea why but his skin was crawling with bumps and for all that he felt naked-exposed he kept his human skin. Chris barked and Jensen bared his teeth at him, snapped at him, hackles raised and _demanding_ obedience. 

“What the fuck?” Jared shouted over the noise, “Jensen!”

The pack—his pack—was shoving at him, all furry wolf bodies, heavy with bulk and no fingers to urge him along gently. Their tails were down and their heads were low and he fought back against them like trying to break free from a rip tide. All the strangers were howling again, pawing the ground and going _crazy_. 

“We can’t leave him,” Jared said. He grabbed at Milo’s fur and shoved at Mike’s wolf face but they kept right on pushing him on. Their shoulders and bodies kept him between them when he fought back and their teeth nipped at his skin when he tried to stand still and refuse to move. “Damn it, listen to me—we can’t just leave him, we can’t—we _aren’t_ …”

Chris shifted, all fury and hurt and slapped two hands against his chest and shoved him back. He stumbled and tripped over the underbrush and the wolves surrounding him. “We _aren’t_ part of this pack,” he yelled at him. Then he looked repentant and it was a terrible look on him. “It’s over, Jared. It’s _over_.” He shook his head. 

“It is not!” Jared shouted, “let me go back, move!”

“Sure,” Chris said, “we’ll let you go back. You know what happens when you go back? He fucks you—in front of all of them and then they fight you because you’re the alpha’s mate and if you aren’t strong enough to defeat them all they’ll eat you. Do you understand that?” He shoved at him again, hands tight on his arms and the pack around them turned in worried circles with whines and barks and nips at their thighs and knees. “He’s protecting you, Jared. He’s doing the only thing he knows how—it’s over.”

“No,” he shouted. “I won’t—”

Chris shoved him again, back against a tree so the barked scraped his skin raw and his eyes were hollowed out again. “You will,” he said, “so shut the fuck up and walk or I’ll knock you out and drag your ass.” Then he moved back and waited a breath for Jared to say another word or fight against him.

\--

They went to Sam’s little house at the edge of the larger pack’s territory and found her sitting outside of the little door with the bags already packed and waiting for them. She looked at him and then at Chris who was following a few steps behind him to shove whenever he tried to balk and turn back. Alona went up to her and whined a low noise that earned her a pat on the head and a scratch behind her ears. 

“Christopher,” Sam said.

“Not my fault he’s a fucking idiot,” Chris said, “he can bitch at me all he wants when he’s _still alive to do it_.” He reached down to grab his bag—the one with the initials stitched into it—and Sam picked up their other back to slip onto Mike’s back. 

“Fuck you,” Jared snapped at him.

“Suck my dick,” Chris snarled back. 

Sam rolled her eyes and picked up the last bag to put around her own shoulders. She scratched Alona’s ears again and worked her way through the pack to get at him in the center. She was short and strange in clothes. Her hands were rough when she touched him briefly. “It’s going to hurt,” she said, “you need to know that—they told me that you’ve been away from him before but that’s nothing to compared to what it’s going to feel like now. So you need to know that it’s going to hurt like hell—like you got beat, like your heart got ripped out through your ass, like there’s no reason to keep moving at all.”

That was just motherfucking great. It wouldn’t have to hurt if they—

“You’re going to be stupid about it,” she continued, “you’re going to want to come after him, you’re going to forget why you ever wanted to be away from him to start with and nobody is going to be able to talk any sense to you at all. That’s normal. You need to know that. You have to go anyway.”

“Why?” Jared demanded.

“See?” Chris demanded from the side. “Touchy-feely time is over. We’re leaving.” He stepped past his mother to grab his cigarettes off the stoop of the house and then turned back to her. “You got the number?” he asked her.

“I got it,” she said. He ducked down so she could kiss his forehead and touch his hair. “You take care of this boy.” Then she reached out a hand for Mike and crouched down to kiss his snout. She smoothed her hand over his head and then reached over for Milo and Christian and Aldis too. “Good boys.” When she stood up she moved away from them and Alona was barking at Chris before he stuck his finger up at her and got slapped by his mom for it. 

\--

Chris stayed human all the way out of the territory, around the invisible edges of it until they were back in a part of the trees that looked vaguely familiar to Jared. He stayed a few feet behind him, with the wolves moving slow and taking their time keeping him caged in and obeying their unspoken demands. “This is where we get off,” Chris said.

Zoe and Erica broke away from the pack; Steve pulled away and headed back. 

“Where are they going?” Jared demanded, “are they going back to Jensen? Why the hell do they get to go back to Jensen?”

“Keep moving,” Chris said. He shoved at his back to make him step forward and Mike and Aldis nudged at his legs to be sure that the momentum kept him in step with them. Chris pulled a cigarette out of his book bag and lit it. “Jensen can’t do this alone and Zoe’s the most vicious bitch in the pack.”

“Why can’t she just be alpha then?” Jared demanded. His whole body was starting to itch. He couldn’t catch Jensen’s scent anymore and it was like flaying his skin away. Chris’ hand was against his back again and Jared threw an elbow back against it. When the shove came again he turned around and shoved Chris back. “Stop fucking pushing me, you fucking asshole.”

Chris’ smirk was grating on his nerves and the gentle shoves of the wolves at his legs were too fucking much to try to put into proper perspective. He kicked his knees against their bodies and tried to get his fists on Chris—on his face, on his shoulders, on his chest. He didn’t care where the fuck he hit the bastard so long as he left bruises. 

The wolves around them were whining while Chris ducked away from him. His smirk stayed in place with the cigarette dangling from the edge of his lips. 

“I hate you!” Jared screamed at him, “I hate you all.”

“There’s our boy,” Chris said with that awful grin. He grabbed his elbow and spun him around again, shoved him forward across sticks and underbrush that stung the bottoms of his feet. Jared tripped and it was only the wolves that kept him upright and Chris’ hand on his arm shoving him forward-and-forward. “Tell us all about how you’re so much better than us.”

\--

“Let me go back,” Jared said at last. He _hurt_ , he just _hurt_ like this, all human and tired and getting farther and farther away from his mate. Jensen was nothing but a memory miles behind them as they walked at a snail’s pace through the darkened forest. “Please,” Jared said, “please let me go back.”

Let me be near him, let me smell him and touch him and wrap my whole body around him. Let me fuck him and let me love him and let me hold onto him so hard that it hurt. Let me be there, with him—no matter what. 

“Keep walking,” Chris said again.

“Fucking son of a bitch,” Jared growled but there was no fury in it. He was on the verge of tears with his skin scrubbed raw by the feeling of being too far away from his mate. “You cock sucking little whore.”

“That’s not nice,” Chris said, “Milo’s the cock sucking whore.” He pushed against Jared’s back again, moved him forward _again_. 

“Please,” Jared said, “why can’t we go back? Why can’t we just turn around and go—”

\--

When the sun was threatening the horizon, the wolves laid themselves down in their puppy piles and Chris finally left long enough to find water and piss. Mike stayed with him while Aldis and Christian went to hunt up their dinner. Milo was lying on his belly with all the outward appearance of being casual but his ears flicked forward every single time Jared so much as shifted how he was sitting in his shorts. 

Mike turned human just for the novelty of it or some fucking shit because he didn’t say a fucking word. No, of course not. Mike wouldn’t say a fucking word besides maybe ‘I told you so’ because he was on Chris’ side and they were both dragging him away from his mate.

For a minute, Jared thought, if Mike had tried to say a single fucking word to him he would have bitten his head off any way so it was best for all that he didn’t even try. 

\--

“It gets easier. Just think about how pissed you’re going to be when you realize you only feel like this because he’s still got his jaws around your soul.” Chris was smoking again, looking hardly rested from that half-nap he’d had before he switched shifts with Milo and took over watching Jared.

Jared knew because he hadn’t slept at all. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t even be still. He couldn’t do anything but shift in the dirt and watch the traitors and kidnappers trying to sleep away the early morning heat of the day. He wanted to stab them all—he wanted to slaughter them, he wanted their blood to cover his skin while he ran back the way he’d come. He wanted to find Jensen.

“Jensen’s using you like an energizer bunny,” Chris said, “the farther away you get the angrier you’re going to be about that.”

Jared wanted to hit him, he wanted to start hitting him and just never fucking _stop_. “I’m magically going to realize that I’m perfectly fine with leaving Jensen behind? Yeah—I can see that happening.”

Chris took another drag off the cigarette shivering against his lips. His eyes were all hollowed out and his lips were quirked up at one corner. He picked at the dirt under his fingernails (or blood, fuck could be anything with Chris). “You’re going to be so pissed, Jared. You think you want him right now because he’s got more of your soul than he usually has. When that hits you—when you can understand that—you’re going to be so pissed.”

“I told him to fucking take it,” Jared said, “I told him he could use our bond to get strong enough to kill his father and if he still has it than he still needs it. Shut your fucking mouth—you don’t even have a soul mate, you probably don’t even have a soul.”

That earned him a snort and Chris shook his head at him.

\--

“Please,” Jared begged when they were walking again. He’d turn to run for it and had the scratch marks and teeth marks from the wolves that immediately corrected his course. They were all tight around him again, shoving with their bodies. They were plodding along, crawling across the span of space that they’d ran across on their way in. “Please, please, please, please, please…”

His only answer was Chris behind him shifting the bag on his back.

\--

At some point, Jared started to cry and then he started to sob. When they finally stopped he just collapsed with it and the pack was all around him with their curled bodies and their soft-sand-paper tongues soothing him. Mike snugged in tight to his chest and licked his tears on his face with a whimper. Jared hurt so bad his chest was imploding with it. His muscles were cramped and tight and his guts were loose and watery. His throat was laced with razors and his head felt like it had been stuffed full of cotton.

\--

Mike sat with him in his human skin. He kept his hand on Jared’s arm, ran his thumb idly up and down across his dirt-spotted skin. He still wasn’t talking to him while they waited for Jared to have enough energy to move his body (he didn’t, he might never, he just didn’t see the point in moving at all if it was moving farther away).

“I know who my soul mate is,” Mike whispered quietly, “I’ve known for a long time. I never, ever want to be like you are now. I love Tom. I want to be with him and I know that with him, everything is feel is exactly how _I_ feel and not how he feels or how he wants me to feel or just a side effect of some stupid mystical bond.” He kept his thumb brushing across Jared’s skin as he spoke. Marking seconds of the day that was passing so slowly it was another ache to add onto the list of complaints. “Funny thing—my soul mate is a woman. I saw her once, she was human and as soon as I saw her, smelled her, I knew she was mine. I don’t know her name; I don’t know anything about her. She had a kid with her. It could have been her baby, you know? Could have been some kid she was watching, I don’t know.”

“I was perfect with him,” Jared said.

Mike snorted at that. “Oh man, if I were a worse person, I’d hold this against you forever.” Then he went back to petting Jared like a dog.

\--

“Get up or I’m carrying you,” Chris said in the evening. The food he’d hunted and killed and brought back for him was going sour in the dirt next to Jared’s face. His feet were scratched and coated in mud and sticking out of the ends of a pair of shorts that really had seen better days. The wolves were already up and moving around, getting anxious to get farther away.

“Are we going back to Jensen?” Jared asked.

Chris grabbed him by the arms, hauled him up to sitting and then crouched now enough to get him across his shoulder. It was awkward and inelegant and Jared went all dead weight and took satisfaction in the way Chris’ breath was ragged and he grunted at the effort it took to carry him.

\--

The first break of anger came when they stopped, when Chris dropped him on his ass. He had no idea where they were but the air smelled more familiar here than it had before. The trees seemed like the type that he’d seen before and as he looked around at the wolves he wondered at how tired they looked, how filthy their coats were and how Chris had new bruises over his still-healing wounds. 

The state of his pack—of this odd collection of friends that fate had thrown at him—made him angry. They shouldn’t have been like this, out here and exhausted and watching him anxiously for the last sign that he was going to snap and lose his fucking mind.

He shouldn’t be losing his fucking mind. 

\--

Jared walked when they finished resting. Chris shoved him a few times, made him move when the effort of lifting and dropping his feet overwhelmed him. Every little foot fall made him a little angrier. 

He was heading back to his life—that was their deal. He helped Jensen defeat his father in the only way he could and in return Jared got to come back to his life. He was headed back—to Sandy and Gen and school and the _rest of his life_ and he’d been sobbing on the floor of the forest and begging just to give it all up.

The ache in his chest cut through his bones and his muscles and left him grasping one hand against his chest just because it was—

\--

“How do I get it back?” Jared asked when they stopped again. He couldn’t live like this, couldn’t handle the pain and emptiness in his chest. Thinking around it was like skirting the very edge of a cliff and hoping like hell a strong wind didn’t nudge you right over. There were sharp rocks at the bottom and there was nowhere he wanted to go again. 

Chris quirked an eyebrow at that. “Took your fucking time about it, didn’t you?” Then he sighed and shrugged. “Nobody knows. Werewolves aren’t scholarly types. From what I’ve seen, whoever wins the first fight for dominance is the one that has control over the bond and the soul.”

“Motherfucker,” Jared hissed. He looked over at Milo and Christian and Aldis. “Is that what happens?”

Christian barked—at Chris, not at him—and then busied himself with licking Milo’s face as if it just occurred to him that it was dirty. 

“Yup,” Chris said, “you’re stubborn though. If you want it enough and you pull hard enough, you can get it back.” Then he yawned and patted around the pockets of his bag for the cigarettes he’d finished smoking hours ago. “You think you could get your shit together long enough for us to get you back home? I mean not that this fucking slow ass scenic tour hasn’t been fun.”

Jared scrubbed at his hair, filth and maybe fleas, and the hurt in his chest leeched away the energy in his body. “Yeah,” he said, “yeah, I can do that.”

\--

As wolves, they ran for miles and miles. Straight away from Jensen toward his life and even if he wanted it, even if he could remember that he wanted it, the very motion of running cut straight through his resolve.

\--

“If it helps,” Milo said quietly while he sat on first watch making sure Jared didn’t try to make a break for it and run back, “Jensen’s coming back to you. The bond works both ways—it’s like anything. It can be good or it can be twisted and malicious and wrong. If you’re hurting, he’s hurting.”

“That doesn’t help,” Jared said.

\--

Next day, Jared walked with human legs for a while and Aldis kept him company in his human body while Chris strolled in his wolf form. There was nothing but the monotony of trees and underbrush and the loud and echoing pain in his chest. 

“You just need to fuck him again,” Aldis said suddenly. He grinned and then shrugged, “I mean, when you see him. It’ll make you feel better. You haven’t fucked enough. That’s what’s wrong.”

Jared snorted. “Is that what it is?”

“We don’t have a lot of other shit to worry about—we got an all we can eat buffet and we’ve got a whole wardrobe and shelter is anywhere you want to lay down so fucking is our top priority. Trust me on this, Jared—Jensen comes back? You’re going to be fucking him constantly.”

Thing was, fucking Jensen seemed like his idea of heaven—naked to the skin and trapped together and nothing else in the universe but that.

\--

It took them a week to get back to his apartment when it had only taken a couple of days to get away from it. When they stopped in the clearing where he’d fucked Jensen there was nothing left—not even the smell of them—to mark it as anything but another small clearing in the woods. Chris handed out their clothes and they walked with a shuffle through the city that was still waking up slowly and uncertainly.

They found his building and climbed the steps up to his door. The familiar smell of the girls (and Tom, of course) was a wash of reassurance that made the ache even worse. He stood outside of it for a long time with the pack at his back holding their breath and waiting for him to make a decision. It pissed him off, how they waited for him now when they’d shoved him away from Jensen when—

“Christ,” Jared mumbled, meant _I don’t know if I can do this, I don’t know if I can leave him, I don’t know if I can even pretend that I’m whole when I’m shattered into little pieces and he has all of them, I don’t know—I don’t, I just don’t even—_. Then he reached his hand up and knocked on the door.


	15. (stand up now) 5

Gen opened the door with her pants pulled on hastily under her sleep shirt. She looked like he’d waked her up or interrupted her breakfast. For a minute she was smiling—sunny and beautiful and he thought _I could love her, I could have loved her all my life_ but the dull throbbing ache of his heart spiked through his body and all he could think was _Jensen, I want Jensen, I want—_

“Keep moving,” Chris said, more gently than he had in all the space between there and here. He put a hand against Jared’s back but didn’t shove. 

Sandy came to the door too, sleepy-eyed and yawning. She stopped short behind Gen and the two of them glanced at one another before Gen was reaching out a hand toward him. It was such a foreign gesture, that little kindness. Her tiny fingers touched his wrist and her skin was cool against his. He was just so _tired_ from the ache and the walk and the heaviness of his body and soul and—

Gen didn’t ask any questions when he stepped forward, pushed with the tips of Chris’ fingers and Milo’s hand on his lower back and Aldis’ against the center between his shoulder blades. Gen pulled him with her hand on his wrist and Sandy came closer to grab his other. He stumbled across the threshold, through the tiny hall and then they were wrapping themselves around him. Gen pressed to his chest with her arms tight around his waist, Sandy against his side with her hand petting down his back. The pack moved in behind him, spread in a circle around them—around him.

His knees felt like pudding and his bones felt like they were made of jelly so when he tried to move he just folded down into nothing. It was the pack that grabbed him around the girls, kept him on his feet until they could get him on the couch. 

“What happened?” Gen asked (at last), “where’s—”

“Jensen’s back with the other pack,” Chris said. His attention was back on the threesome because Mike was already searching out where Tom was sleeping in one of the girls’ room. Milo and Aldis and Christian were shifting on their feet and looking nervous while they communicated with nothing but their bodies. “I got him,” Chris said.

Milo nodded and Christian was already turning to leave again. Aldis hovered for a second and then smiled at the girls in a way that seemed more awkward and scared than reassuring. He ducked to the side to look at Jared. 

“Sex,” Aldis said, “I’m serious—it’ll fix everything.”

Milo growled at the words and Aldis gave him a shit eating grin as he moved out of the way. Milo looked over at Chris and the girls that were building up to one hell of a fury from being kept in the dark. For a second Milo didn’t even look like he knew what he was going to do and then he stuck out his hand for Jared to shake. “If we can, we’ll come back and see you sometime.” His smile was kind of lopsided like it always was. 

“You’re going back,” Jared said. (He meant _take me, take me back, please take me back_.)

“Yeah,” Milo said, “he’s our alpha. He would do it for us, you know?”

Jared shoved himself up on noodle arms and swung his feet out so they were on the floor. Milo helped him rearrange himself on the couch with no pretense at all. “Yeah,” he agreed. (He was doing so well, not screaming and demanding to be carried back with them.) “Take care of him and yourselves.”

Milo nodded. Then he went past Chris, touched his arm and then he was gone, heading back out the door before any questions could be asked or answered. His mates followed him out the door. 

“What the fuck is going on?” Gen demanded, “what the hell—you bring him back looking like he’s dead and now they’re just leaving and—” She looked ready to scratch and claw and bite until she got answers and Chris was the last man standing that could answer.

Chris, without a shirt, skin still bruised and split open where teeth and claws had opened him up straight through the skin and damn near to the insides. He put his hands up and even from the couch (such a disadvantage that) Jared knew that he was exhausted. “Look,” Chris said and his tongue worried at the edge of his lips, “I’ll answer all your fucking questions but I need a fucking shower and I need fucking food and he,” Chris pointed at him, “needs you. Go snuggle or whatever the hell you humans do.”

“Are you serious right now?” Sandy demanded. She was more the kick you in the balls type than the scratch and bite. For all of his normal advantages, Chris was no match for her anger in his state.

“Guys,” Jared said, “come on.” He held out his hands, tipped his head back and gave them the puppy face. It was a low-blow to their worry and hurt and confusion but it got them away from Chris and the relief that crossed his face made it worth it.

Gen came first and Sandy sneered at Chris and went around him to sit next to Jared. 

\--

Sandy had to work. She bitched at Tom and Mike about not fucking in her bed (fat chance that) and shouted through the door that they damn well better change the sheets. Then she bitched at Chris about hogging the bathroom and fogging up the mirror. He offered to do her make-up for her and she said something back to him that Jared couldn’t hear clearly and didn’t sound like he even wanted to hear it. 

Gen stayed at his side while Sandy moved around. She leaned in against him until his body got too heavy to hold up and then she laid between him and the back of the couch with her arm and leg thrown across him. 

“There better be answers when I get back,” Sandy said. She came over and kissed Jared’s forehead and he hugged her with one heavy arm before she moved away. “I should stay,” she whispered, “you look terrible—I could call out. I should stay. We can eat ice cream, watch movies, something. You just look so bad.”

“Thanks,” Jared whispered.

“Go in,” Gen said, “I’ll call in an hour or so and tell them it’s an emergency and you have to come home.”

“Yeah, ok,” Sandy said. She went with a backward look like she didn’t want to and then it was just him and Gen, the blaring sound of the stereo drowning out the sounds of Tom and Mike fucking and the blurry sound of the water in the bathroom as Chris scrubbed away the woods.

“Tell me you’re okay,” Gen whispered into his neck. Funny how she didn’t even seem convinced. He tightened his arm around her shoulder for a second and she kissed his throat and just held onto him.

\--

“It’s like this,” Chris said after he’d eaten and found fresh boxers in Jared’s room that he could wear. Sandy was home and she’d brought them all food from the salad bar at the grocery store down the street. “Jensen killed that pack’s alpha and now he is the alpha of that pack. Long story short, that pack would eat Jared alive if he stayed, plus if he could think for himself he wouldn’t want to stay. They’re all mindless sycophantic animals because that’s how they were raised. That alpha bitch that Jensen killed—”

“Wasn’t it his father?” Sandy whispered.

“Yes,” Chris said shortly, “anyway, that bitch kept everyone as wolves because they were easier to control. Jensen’s that’s pack alpha and was—probably still could be considered—our alpha. Our pack doesn’t really work like normal packs.”

“Ok,” Gen said carefully, “but why the fuck is Jared like that? That’s what I want to know. What the hell happened to him? He isn’t even talking—and he hasn’t shut up since the first time I met him. I swear to God, he talks in his _sleep_.”

Jared tried to smile at that and watched Chris worry his tongue at the corner of his lips. 

“I need cigarettes,” Chris mumbled and then, “Jensen is using the bond to leech energy. As long as he’s using the bond, Jared’s going to be—like that.”

“Excuse me?” Gen said, “are you fucking serious?”

“Why is he doing that? Does he know what he’s doing? Why is he doing that to Jared?” Sandy demanded.

“He knows,” Chris said. Then he just shrugged and looked over at Jared and then back at the girls. “Look, I’m sparing you the ugly details here. Just be satisfied to know that Jensen’s doing the best he can and the whole fucking situation sucks.”

“I’m not accepting anything,” Gen shouted at him. She was all white-knuckled fury sitting on the arm of the couch and casting sideways glances down at him. She flung an arm out and pointed at him, “look at him! _Look_ at him.”

Sandy’s door opened and the smell of sex oozed out into the air. Mike cleared his throat as he stepped out behind them. He looked over their heads at Chris and then came around to sit on the coffee table that had been shoved up against the TV stand so Sandy could sit on the floor next to Jared. 

Tom was moving too, probably taking his time because he must have heard all these dark secrets once before. 

“Mike,” Gen said, “tell us what the fuck is going on. What—why the hell is this necessary? He went for four years without his soul mate and now all of a sudden he’s like—look at him.” For all she kept saying that she wasn’t looking at him. He must have been one hell of a mess if she couldn’t even bring herself to look at him.

“Jensen’s the alpha of that pack. And,” Mike scrunched his eyebrows up and glanced at Chris then back at them, “look—Jensen was raised to be an alpha and for whatever fucking reason—probably Jared—he managed to figure out on his own that being an alpha was more than demanding absolute obedience and killing everyone that opposed him. If he’s their alpha than he’s not going to leave them until he figures they can survive on their own. Right now? They can’t. Jared’s not safe there, he’ll never be safe there and Jensen knows that.”

“This is why you were so pissed before,” Sandy said, “you knew this was going to happen.”

“But that doesn’t answer the fucking question,” Gen said, “ _why_ does Jensen need so much power?”

“To hunt down and kill all of his father’s fucking followers,” Chris said. He was pink with irritation. “Ok? He’s hunting them all down and ripping out their throats.” He slapped his hands against his thighs and looked at Mike, “I need fucking cigarettes. I need fucking pants.” 

“Chris,” Jared said. His voice must have been startling because they all looked at him. The girls with pink cheeks and pink eyes and Mike with a kind of wonder and Chris with nothing but irritation and a hollowed-out stare. “I’ve got old shorts in my closet. They’ll probably be tight on you but—”

“Thanks,” Chris said, “I’m taking a shirt too.”

\--

The girls shoved and pushed and prodded him into the shower and he stood there under the water feeling kind of useless about it. Mike came after ten minutes of him being still and letting water run over him. (He was thinking about Jensen, about the last time they’d been together in here.) 

“Soap,” Mike said and sat on the toilet, “I swear to God if you make me wash your ass I’ll spend the rest of my life telling you ‘I told you so’ and mocking you.”

“I don’t have a wash cloth,” Jared said.

Mike stood up, rifled through the shelves over the toilet and then shoved a wash cloth into the shower with an impatient fist. Then he sat down again and waited while Jared scrubbed at the dirt on his skin. It seemed to take hours and when the water was running clear and starting to get cold, Mike said: “wash your hair.”

\--

Jared slept in his room—or tried—he listened to Mike and Tom talk quietly about what happened and plane tickets and what they were going to tell their jobs when they got back to their lives. He listened to Gen shift and toss and turn in her bed. Sandy was out on the couch worrying at her quilt and picking her fingernails. He listened to Chris out on the back porch smoking his way through his second pack of cigarettes since he got back from the store.

He tried to sleep, tried to bury his face into his pillows, his blankets, the bed and smell Jensen there. It eased the ache in his chest but it made it so much worse to sit and think about how they had been here together.

\--

In the morning, or just later that night, he woke up. He was all furry, with a tail and the strangeness of waking up as a wolf with boxers half kicked off his wolf legs was enough to snap him completely awake. It was easier to think like that, as a wolf, easier to work around the hurt. 

He sniffed the air, caught the smell of Chris’ blood from his still split skin and got up on his four wolf paws to pad off and find it. Mike and Tom were awake again (or still) not talking but being quiet about moving together in Sandy’s room. He padded past that door, out toward the back porch. 

Out there it smelled like tears, nicotine stains and blood. Chris was staring out in the air wearing nothing but Jared’s old shorts. His elbows were against his knees and there was another cigarette between his fingers with a mound of butts at his feet. He looked over at him when Jared stopped just outside the door and gave a worried whine.

They were all that was left of their pack, just two. Mike was leaving, he was never going to stay, was never really going to be part of them again. It was just him and Chris left. Everyone else was gone. 

“You know,” Chris said. He moved his elbow just slightly, shifted the way he was sitting and exposed that still angry-red wound in his side that smelled the most like blood just under the scabs. “The old ones—before that bitch killed the last of them—used to say that the alpha’s bitch was the mother of the pack.” His words breathed out into a hiss when Jared nosed in against the scabs and lapped his tongue across them to tug at the reddened skin. He could taste the sourness of infection on his tongue and whined harder as he pressed harder with his tongue to drag the scabs away. “You’re the biggest fucking bitch I’ve ever seen.” His hand pushed through Jared’s fur and clenched there at the base of his neck, where his hair was the longest across his shoulders. 

“You’re going to be okay,” Chris said after a moment.

\--

In the morning, the real morning, Jared woke up as a human again. His mouth tasted like shit and his muscles all ached from being stretched out into this human shape when everything was easier to deal with when he was a wolf. On his back, in his room, he could hear Chris’ breathing in the hall where he was curled up outside of Jared’s door (still making sure he didn’t make a run for it). Sandy was making toast and coffee. Gen was in the shower with her fruity-shampoo smelling so strong it damn near gave him a headache.

Mike and Tom were still snoozing, not quite awake or didn’t sound like it.

He took a breath, closed his eyes and thought—as loud as he could, as clearly as he could:

 _You can have my soul, all that you need, but you have to come back to me_.

It wasn’t much, it wasn’t nearly enough, but it was all he could do.

\--

A day later, Jared was walking around on his own free will. It wasn’t much of an accomplishment when the world was waiting beyond the edges of the apartment. There were bills piling up, curious professors calling, his mother leaving hour long messages (or it seemed like it) all but crying over how he just wasn’t right. Gen and Sandy were being too nice to him, waiting for him to break completely and Chris was balancing that out with his twenty four hour guard duty making sure he didn’t do anything stupid like try to leave.

Mike hugged him good bye in the middle of the living room. “Call me,” he said, “I’ll call you. I’ll call you because you’ll never call me. Answer the phone.”

Tom hugged him too; balance all off because of his leg. “Take care of yourself.”

Maybe they just didn’t know what to say. That was probably just because there wasn’t anything to say.

\--

Chris left him alone with the girls on the fourth day, went out wearing his washed and dried jeans and shirt. He made Jared swear not to try to run off and the girls to swear to call Chris (on Jared’s phone) if it so much as kind of looked like Jared might want to exit the apartment or kill himself.

Gen took that to mean that Jared had to be dragged into her bedroom and subjected to getting his hair brushed and his fingernails and toes painted while they watched a marathon of bloody action movies where everyone but the hero died. They had popcorn and chocolate and cereal and Sandy kept up a running commentary that would have made a film critic cry.

When they were falling asleep, all tangled up on Gen’s big bed, Gen snuggled in tight to his chest and Sandy already asleep behind him, he said, “I’m going to be okay.”

“You’re scaring the hell out of me,” Gen whispered.

“Yeah, I know,” Jared said, “but I’m going to be okay.” He kissed her hair and she kissed his cheek before she settled in against him again.

\--

Chris was gone for a day and a half, came back early in the morning with a bag from Best Buy and a fist full of wadded up twenties and tens. He had a shit eating grin as he tossed the bag at Jared who only barely caught it before it hit the ground. Chris dropped the money on the table while Sandy—who was eating cereal next to him while they watched cartoons—stared at it.

“Did you rob a bank?” Sandy said.

The bag from Best Buy had a brand new laptop in it and Jared just stared at it and then looked up at Chris. He was grinning, his knuckles were skinned and he just shrugged off their amazement. 

“I know how to get money,” he said, “my Mom taught me.” He stood up again to get away from their stares. “Going to smoke.” He pulled his cigarettes out of his pocket and headed out toward the balcony. “That money on the table’s for food or rent or whatever, I don’t care.” He pulled the door to the balcony open and paused, “that laptop is for you to start writing again, Jared.”

\--

The blank page and blinking cursor mocked him.

That was ok though. Jared was mostly just laying on his bed, stretched in his human body (only because the girls were home, only because they wouldn’t understand that when he was just a wolf all he had to think about was the humming certainty that Jensen was still alive and all he cared about was the plethora of smells and sounds around him). He was thinking at Jensen again, thinking _come back when you’re finished, bring me back all the rest of t he pieces, let me fix myself_.

\--

When he got angry—it felt like digging himself out of the mud—he got _furious_. Chris was there because Chris was always there, just outside of eye sight but still waiting for him to flip his shit and either run for it or kill himself. 

“Why?” he shouted at Chris, “why the hell did it have to me? Why the fuck did it have to me? I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t agree to this—I just wanted him to live through killing his father. I wanted him to _survive_ that, I didn’t want him to lose his mind about it because it was his fucking father! I didn’t want him to die, it’s the only thing I could do—I didn’t want this.”

Chris nodded like a bobble head and said nothing at all.

\--

In the middle of the night, he curled up on his bed as a wolf and Chris curled up outside his door as a wolf. They were a pathetic little pack, or just the leftovers of a pack. He thought of out in the forest, he thought of the piles and pairs of bodies as they slept in little private lumps. When Jensen had gotten up and took his turn standing guard, he barely noticed because he spent his whole life sleeping alone.

Then, all his focus was on how wrong his body felt when it was twisted into the form of a wolf. Now, all he could think about was how much he wanted Jensen to be there with him, wrapped up in a puppy pile with him and sharing his warmth and the comfort that came with just touching him.

He started to whine (didn’t mean to, never meant to) and Chris picked himself up off the floor, nails clicking on the hardwood, and came into the room with him. He put his paws up on the bed and licked his muzzle like _shut up_ or _I know_ then stepped across him and huffed as he turned three circles and dropped to sleep next to him.

\--

 _Give it back_ was Jared’s new motto. It got him out of bed, got him out to breakfast, got him through cleaning up the house. It got him all the way through the morning news and checking his messages. It worked up his nerve so he could call his mother back. 

She was threatening to bring him cookies and force-feeding him until he was all better. 

“Jared!” his mother shouted when she answered the phone. “Honey, what’s wrong? What’s going on? You have me worried sick.”

“I’m okay Mama,” Jared said and _give it back_ got him through the lie. “I’ve just been kind of sick. I’m getting better, the girls here are taking real good care of me.”

Lies, lies, lies—he was always a terrible liar. If his mother suspected something, if she knew how alright he really wasn’t, she didn’t call him on it. She ordered him to consume chicken soup and cookies and swore if he didn’t call her again within a week she was coming up and repossessing him (her words, not his).

\--

Jared gave up, or just gave in, and sat down on the couch with the laptop resting on a pillow across his lap. He beat his fingers against the keyboard, throwing out the words of his life from the very first moment he ever saw Jensen fucking whatever the hell his last name might have been. (In the story, Jensen was Dean and Jared was Sam.) 

He wrote about months of dating a dog.

He wrote about the night from hell he spent in a cage with hungry animals, rotten meat and pissed-on newspaper.

He wrote about four years of itching, scratching, un-ending loneliness. 

He wrote about Chris, stupid and cocky and so fucking full of himself, crashing his date and dragging him right back into the pack he thought he’d gotten away from. 

He wrote about fear—that bone-deep fear that made you wonder if dying were the worst thing that could ever happen. Maybe there were worse things, maybe there were things like what had happened to Sam, things that dragged your death out over years and years of being slowly-slowly tortured by the suffocating presence of a _soul mate_ that was supposed to love you.

He wrote about Jensen, as truthfully as he could. He wrote about his intentions and his actions. He wrote about how hard Jensen tried to be a human for him and how underneath his human skin he was still just an animal and probably always would be.

God, but he loved him anyway, he loved him so fucking much it turned his stomach and clenched in his chest and left him begging for breath from it.

He wrote about the night in the woods when he gave over his humanity and his soul and how he had no idea what the fuck he was doing. He wrote about the days in the woods, the fight, the taste of blood on his tongue, the strange world that he’d only seen for a minute.

He wrote about coming back.

When he was finished—hours, days later—he found himself staring at the end of meaningless words with no fucking idea what the ending was going to be. His fictionalized autobiography was begging for an ending and he was powerless to make one.

 _Give it back_ , he thought again, _give it back_.

\--

Chris read his words and said, “it’s decent.” 

\--

The girls never said that they were struggling to pay bills or that he was being a moocher but he knew it was true anyway. Sometimes, when he wasn’t lying around so much but really working up the urge to move, he thought that he should go back and beg Jeffery Dean for his job. He should go to the university where he was still listed as a student and beg them to give him a second chance. 

In the end, it was Chris that cleared his throat over TV dinners (and they all knew that later in the night, Chris went out and hunted down the rest of his dinner because Salisbury steak just wasn’t enough), “I’ve got a job.”

“What, really?” Sandy asked.

“Construction,” Chris said.

That was that.

\--

Jared wrote other things. He wrote stories he built around the story of his life, plucked circumstances but not characters out of the secrets he’d been told. He wrote violent deaths and heart breaking climaxes and sweet resolutions that left him wondering who the fuck he was trying to fool.

\--

Sam, Chris’ mother, called his phone after weeks had bled almost into a month. Chris was gone at work, out in the sun wearing the same pair of jeans all the time and fooling strangers into thinking he was just one of them, no one special.

“That’s fine,” Sam said through the phone. Like it didn’t matter that her son wasn’t there and she didn’t mind. Maybe she thought she’d have all the time in the world to talk to him again or maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe she had said everything she needed to say to Chris when he was still young and trying to figure out the world he lived in. 

“Sorry,” Jared said again.

“You were a wolf geek once, weren’t you?” she asked. It was funny how everyone knew that about him, how they didn’t bother to think of the difference of werewolves and wolves and stop to figure that he didn’t know anything about the way werewolves moved or thought or worked. “Lone wolves don’t live long. Take care of my son, Jared.”

He snorted then, thought about calling her a crazy bitch and hanging up on her. But he cleared his throat at her silence. “I will,” he promised.

\--

 _Give it back_ became _I can do this_. Jared dragged himself through the day in the same routine. He made breakfast and dinner and gave Chris his bank account to put his under-the-table pay into because werewolves born in the woods as _pups_ just didn’t have any interest in birth certificates. 

The girls thanked him and Chris shook his head at him. 

“Quite a pack we’ve got here, isn’t it?” Chris said out on the balcony after the dishes were all washed and the girls were doing whatever they did. 

Jared smiled and it felt strange on his face. “Yeah, I guess.” He rubbed his hands against his jeans and looked out at the sky. “Fuck. This is not where I thought my life was going.” It felt nice to say it—right out loud.

“You know, back then,” back in the pack house, so long ago it seemed like decades, “Mike wanted me to tell you the truth. Guess he figured if any of them had the pedigree to defy an alpha it’d be me. I thought about it, hell, I damn near told you a few times. Jensen can kiss my ass—I don’t follow his orders because I’m afraid of him or because I’m supposed to and his stupid gag order on telling you the truth was—well, you know.” He cleared his throat and looked out over the city with that same restless shift of his body. “He had to tell you himself. Fucking sucks, but no way you would ever have trusted him if you found out from anyone else.”

Jared nodded. 

\--

After a month and a half, when he was tired of house work and cooking dinner, he bought a printer with Chris’ hard-earned money and started sending in all the stories he’d written to every publisher he could find that might be interested. He sent manuscripts to agents too, looking for anyone that was willing to take what he had.

While he waited for that, he dragged himself out of the house into the dry and aching sunlight, and across town to Jeffery Dean’s cramped little office off the kitchen of the diner and put it all out for him.

“I’m a werewolf and my soul mate is slowly suffocating me to death.” It was the truth. 

Jeffery Dean burst into laughter that wasn’t hurtful or painful but just plain good old laughter. His eyes were all crinkled up at the edges as he looked at him. “Yeah,” he said when he finished, “I’ve had that happen to me a time or two, myself. You can have your job back, Jared.” 

\--

For a while, except for how his mother was so fucking worried about him it nagged at his ragged nerves, things were normal. A few months lumbered by while he waited for his rejection letters from the publishers and agents. He scribbled a few stories for contests and sent them in along with his ten dollar entry fees. Chris bought himself a dog bed and raided thrift stores and used paperback stores for books he had and hadn’t read.

The tiny apartment was cramped by the addition of another body and the tall piles of books that grew like stalagmites everywhere there was space to start a new pile. 

The girls liked Chris, the longer he stayed—the more of their stupid boyfriends he drove off with his psychotic grin—the more they liked him. 

“Jared,” Gen said. She was slumped back into the couch with the paper open across her lap while he typed out another story. “I think we should get a bigger place—maybe rent a house or something. You know, somewhere that allows dogs?”

Jared snorted and turned to look at her. “Somewhere that allows dogs? Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Well,” Gen said reasonably, “it’s just that eventually the rest of your—pack—will come back, right? At least maybe. And Chris has a _dog bed_. I’m just saying that it’s kind of hard to explain that we don’t have a dog when we have two giant wolf dogs.”

Jared laughed at that, just a little chuckle and he didn’t realize before how much he missed the sound of it—the act of it—and Gen smiled back at him with that lost sparkle in her eyes. “Hey,” he said, “you know, I think I love you. Like, if I weren’t gay and mated and a werewolf, I’d want to marry you.” 

Gen laughed then, “oh baby,” she said, “that is the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.” She flipped the paper out again, “and you’re not getting out of going to check out these houses with me just because you’re cute again.”

\--

His tiny pack—two humans and two werewolves—went through all the joy and mind-numbing boredom of dealing with realtors and credit checks and applications and house-viewings. Chris vetoed half of the houses due to location and Gen vetoed a couple due to layout. 

Sandy hung with him and talked about paint and curtains and interior decorating while Jared nodded his head along with her words. He interjected at times with a sideways comment about how her ideas were hideous and she slapped him and called him gay.

They found themselves—a few months after they started looking—standing in the living room of a four bedroom house with a living room, a dining room and a huge-ass mud room where the washer and dryer went—stumbling through finding an objection to the place.

“It costs a lot,” Gen said, “I mean with Chris and you working again we can manage it but still—it costs so much more than the apartment.”

“It’s kind of perfect though,” Sandy said.

“Hey, think we can fuck in every room in the house,” Chris asked her. He grinned at her outrage and ducked out the way of her little fists. He caught Jared by the arm and used him as a human (well, ish) shield. 

“He’s really in love with you,” Jared said. He let himself be turned by Chris’ hands on his arms and grinned at Sandy’s fury. “He wants you to have his puppies.”

“That’s terrible,” Sandy said, “they wouldn’t be puppies—would they be puppies?”

“No,” Chris said. He came out from behind Jared and looked around the place. 

\--

Moving, after all the horror of shopping around for the right place to rent, was easy. They rented a truck and him and Chris lugged everything down. He wished like hell he’d had superhuman strength back when he had to carry Gen’s heavy fucking dresser _up_ the stairs. Chris helped him but it was mostly for show because he could have carried the fucker all by himself.

\--

“You know,” Chris said a week after they moved in. They were out on the deck that led directly into the woods, “I don’t think he’s using your soul anymore.”

Jared took a sip of beer and leaned back into the rickety lawn chair. “Yeah,” he agreed, “I don’t think so either. I feel—good, almost normal if I weren’t constantly thinking about him and how much I miss being able to touch him.”

Chris took a drag off his cigarette and then leaned down to the side to stub it out in the giant ashtray that the girls had bought for him. “Thing about Jensen,” Chris said, “is that he always keeps his promises.”

“I just want him back,” Jared said. He was barefoot and stretched out in the cool air. “I want him back so much it hurts. Moving around—doing this? It helps but I keep thinking, it’s all for him. I’m making this pack for him, I’m finding this place for him, I’m moving and living for him. I never felt that way before—I can’t figure out when it changed.”

“Probably when you gave him your soul.” He stood up and looked out toward the woods. “You want to run?”

Yeah, yeah—he could run.

\--

Jared added a line to his phone plan so Chris could have his own phone but his mother still only ever called Jared’s phone. There was always noise behind her, people talking loud or moving around, the honk of cars, the passing sound of life moving at high speed around her.

“I’ll go find him,” Jared said when he answered the call.

“No, that’s alright,” she said. There was a car alarm sounding somewhere behind her. “I’m sending Alona back with Jensen. She’ll help you take care of him.”

“What?”

Sam’s voice was watery over the line but he remembered the crooked flat smile of hers well enough to know when it snuck into her voice like a twist of irony that just _hurt_. “I’m not human anymore,” she said, “I guess I haven’t been for a long time. You aren’t either—like it or not, Jared, you’re his alpha and he’s your pack. He’s yours to take care of. You take care of my son or I swear to God, I will hunt you down and slaughter you.”

Jared looked out through his open door, down the hallway to the dark gray shadow space beyond it. Chris was out running, maybe, Jared couldn’t smell him close by at all. “Yeah,” he said like he was agreeing to pizza, “I’ll take care of him.”

“Good boy.”

\--

A month dragged on after the call and every day he fidgeted and worried and watched Chris like a mother looking after a child. He bought cookies from the store and called his mother for recipes and made cookies until the whole house smelled like vanilla and sugar and he was close to that edge of cookie-sickness he remembered from childhood.

“I’m still not marrying you,” Chris told him one night, “I mean, I get it. You’re a bitch without your alpha but I’m not fucking you, so stop.” He still ate his share of the cookies.

“You’re so fucking funny,” Jared said.

\--

Jared filled the freezer with red meat while the girls eyed him curiously. He couldn’t explain how he knew, just that he knew and with every day he was more and more sure that his pack was coming back. In the evenings he ran with Chris, rubbed his great big wolf body against the leaves and bark and came back exhausted and anxious and waiting.

\--

Alona came first, hanging around at the edges of the back porch light when he woke up in the early morning and blindly stumbled out toward the back door. There was crust at the corner of his eyes and a yawn that cracked open his jaw and made him reconsider his ideas about making sure the back door was left open while he was awake and home.

(Although, really, he could have left the door open while he was sleeping because Chris would have attacked and maimed anything that came through the door.)

He unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door open, reached out with a heavy yawn and pushed open the screen so it could be scratched further open by paws. In his sleep-blindness he barely even noticed Alona standing there and if she hadn’t come to scratch at the door and whined through it when she couldn’t work it open he wouldn’t have registered her presence at all. 

It was raining outside and she was soaked through when he opened the door and let her in. “I’ll get you a towel,” he said, “And clothes or something.” He left her there and ran up the stairs to the closet to get a towel. Chris was out of his room—door always open, of course—and running down the steps on giant wolf paws toward his sister. “Oh fuck,” Jared mumbled to himself.

He took the steps back down two at a time and all but threw the towel at Alona. She shifted out of her soaked and dripping fur into her wet and dripping human skin and grabbed the towel with a shiver. 

“I always forget how cold it is as a human when you’re wet,” she said. 

Chris whined at her and then went up the stairs again.

Alona smiled uncertainly and looked at him. “I ran ahead,” she said quietly, “we’ve probably got like half an hour or something. If that.” Then she tightened the towel around her. “Do you have anything to eat? I’m starving.”

“How cooked do you want it?” he asked.

Alona’s smile was sweet and then scrubbed away at the sound of her brother jumping back down the steps on his human feet. He was wearing his shorts on half-crooked. His smile was all across his face at the sight of her. “Why didn’t you call? Where’s Mom?” He looked out through the door and then back at her and his eyebrows scrunched down and he looked back at her with a sniff at the air.

Jared held his breath, socks damp from the water Alona was dripping everywhere and muscles slowly tensing at the anticipation of a fight.

“She’s not coming,” Alona said quietly. “Chris—look, don’t freak the fuck out here, okay? She’s not coming.”

“Where is she?” Chris demanded, “what did you do?” he was yelling at her, all tight shoulders and arms. 

“I didn’t do anything!” Alona shouted back at him, “you think that I wanted this to happen? You think I didn’t fight her the whole fucking way? Our whole lives she did nothing but tell us how terrible life was there and—”

“She went _back_?” Chris shouted at her. His voice was loud as thunder hitting the walls and echoing back into his face. Alona flinched at the sound of it and the balled up tension of his fists. “Motherfucker!” he screamed and turned toward the screen door. He punched a fist against it, knocked it open and stepped out onto the narrow patio there.

“Chris,” Jared called. He went around Alona, out through the door and almost ran straight into Chris’ back.

“It was her decision,” Alona said. She was so fucking quiet, like a mouse and watching her brother with her fingers loosely holding onto the towel like she knew that she was going to have to chase him any minute now. “Come on, _think_ , there hasn’t ever been anyone that can make Mom’s mind up about anything but Mom.”

“Dude, come back inside—I’ll make breakfast.” Jared was watching Chris, waiting for him to lose it and run and never come back because his little pack was just fine but it wasn’t his _mother_. 

Chris looked at him and snorted, “you’re such a bitch, Padalecki.”

“You’re a dick,” Jared said and the nodded at the door, “come on, man. Listen to your sister.” He meant _don’t make me chase you_ because he would have. He might have chased him all the way through the woods, straight back to the pack territory with all its horrors. 

“A dick you want to suck,” Chris said and he turned back and looked at his sister. She gave him the face—all pathetic and hurt—he rolled his eyes but he headed into the house.

\--

Alona had said that the others were a half-hour behind her so he pulled half the contents of the freezer out and slapped the meat into pans to fry and boil. Chris had joked, just a few weeks ago, that they really should just start keeping around a bottle of cow blood to season everything with. (Mostly he just wanted to make Gen and Sandy gag at the thought of it.) 

“Just how hungry do you think we are?” Chris asked. He was sitting at the table, back to the wall, newspaper spread open in front of him and cigarette curling smoke around his head. He never smoked in the house and if the girls saw him they would be furious. 

“I’ve seen how much you eat,” Jared said, “shut up and do your fucking crossword puzzle.”

Alona was nervous in her chair, still wearing nothing more than a towel with her hair slowly drying into muddy strings that left dirt trails across her shoulders. “Can I help with it?” she asked.

Chris ignored her and it seemed like the kindest thing that he could do. When he did look up from the blank-stare at the page he cleared his throat. “Tell me the rest.”

The silence that followed the command was stagnant and stale, full of apprehension and indecision. Alona put her dirty hands across the little place mat that Sandy had bought to add a ‘woman’s touch’ to the house and toyed with the loose strings at the edge of it. “We travelled around a while. Mom wanted to see what humanity looked like—she said—and I don’t know, Chris. I don’t know what she was looking for but she just kept talking about the pack now that the stupid bitch alpha was gone. People would stare at her—at the scars on her shoulders and her arms and, we could hear them talking about her.” Alona looked over at him and then down at the placemat, “so one day she decided she was going back to the pack. She said that she wasn’t human anymore—she said that our bastard father had finally gotten his way and she went back.” Alona half grinned for a second and it bled away into: “Jensen halved the pack—that’s what it feels like. Him and Milo and Christian and Zoe hunted down the diehards, the ones that refused to change. He took out a couple of them that way and the others came and challenged him for alpha and he killed them—” 

“Say it,” Chris said suddenly and cut into the words.

“Mom challenged him,” Alona said, “I didn’t know that’s what she was going to do. She went there and she challenged him and I thought she had lost her mind—that she just wanted him to kill her because Jesus Christ, you saw him when he was taking out his father he was like…”

“She won,” Chris said.

“Yes,” Alona said quietly.

Jared cleared his throat. He was going to say his part, say how he’d gotten a phone call, how he might have known that something like this was coming but there was a scratching paw at the backdoor and then it was whining its way open and the heavy clump of bare human feet and the scritch-click-scratch of wolf paws interrupted him. 

“Towels!” Christian yelled from the back door, “I smell that food.”

\--

Sandy woke up at the commotion and came down to sit at the table and drink coffee while the wet-and-dirty werewolves devoured the half-cooked meat that Jared put on the plates in front of them. Chris ate his own portion in stony silence. Alona picked at hers.

Milo had new scars on his neck, a few down on his lower arms that looked like teeth had caught and slipped across his skin. Christian had bruises on his face and a split lip but he was loud and happy and hungry as he sat at the table. His stories of their hunts were cheerful (never mind the body count he’d left in his wake). Aldis agreed and disagreed on cue and ate his food like he hadn’t been fed in years.

“But where’s Jensen?” Sandy asked (Jared had been thinking it but he hadn’t asked it, not yet).

“He’s coming,” Milo said, “he didn’t leave when we did.” He said it like it didn’t matter, like it was nothing and Jared had to believe that it was exactly nothing at all. Just the normal way of it.

When the noise became too much, Chris stood up, grabbed his cigarettes and headed out toward the back patio. Jared followed him out, stood on the damp concrete on bare feet (instead of wet socks) and watched the downpour turning their backyard into a mud hole. It would have been fun to play in as wolves, all slip and slide and scraping up mud to roll in. 

“I don’t need a fucking babysitter,” Chris said, “I’m not a fucking idiot.”

“She told me that she was going back,” Jared said, “last time she called—about a month ago. She made me promise that I’d take care of you.” 

Chris clenched his fingers around his cigarette like he could strangle it to death and looked out at the yard with his hollowed out eyes. His silence was laced with hate and hurt. It would have been easier to withstand his fists than his silence but Jared stood right there and watched him smoke and the rain fall. 

“You could have told me,” Chris said finally.

Jared nodded his head, “yeah, I could have. Maybe I figured if she wanted you to know she would have told you.” He watched the back of Chris’ head, the tightness in his shoulders all bunched up and that flighty flinch of muscle as he lifted his hand to his mouth and then down again. 

“Are you going to follow me around now? I’m not you; I don’t need to be watched.”

“Ass,” Jared said because it was kinder than calling Chris a liar. Then he looked out at the trees all heavy with rain and drew in the fresh smell of the wet grass and the soggy sky. He stayed there, silent and careful while Chris smoked the entire pack of cigarettes and when he was done and all his violence was dealt out in rubbed out cigarette butts, they both went back inside.

\--

Milo and Christian and Aldis volunteered to keep an eye on Chris when he went to work or out to get cigarettes or just about anywhere that took him out of the house and out of Jared’s sight. He didn’t ask them and they didn’t say but he was pretty fucking sure the only reason they’d come back at all was to make sure that Chris didn’t lose his fucking mind over this. 

Jared didn’t know a lot about it—just the vague details of well-kept secrets. 

In the evening, he sat outside with Chris and got headaches from watching him chain-smoke without talking. They kept their silence but it wasn’t friendly anymore. Five or so years ago, Chris had done this to him—back then Jared was just an interloper in their lives, some fool that didn’t even have the sense to know that he was being dragged under by a riptide of circumstance. Now he knew more and he could see more and he wasn’t going to be scared away by Chris’ cold shoulder and his silent brewing fury.

“I was thinking,” Jared said, “we should go get Jensen a giant dog house.”

Chris snorted, “as soon as he comes back you’re going to be fucking him blind.”

Yeah, he really was. “But after that,” Jared said, “he is sleeping on the couch for the rest of his fucking life.”

Chris looked at him, across his milky-white shoulder and grinned a little with his thumb pressed to the corner of his lips. For a second he looked like he was going to say something, maybe even let go of whatever he was chewing over in his head but instead he just shook his head and shook it away. 

\--

Jensen came back in the evening the two days after the others had shown up in the morning. They were all outside, sitting around Chris in strategic positions (except Sandy who was sitting on his lap with her arm around his shoulders and her fingers petting the nape of his neck) while they did nothing but talk shit and trade stories. 

Gen was sitting in Jared’s lap, curled around him with her eyes on Chris and that worried little frown on her face she’d had for months after Jared had come back from the woods looking as if he’d lost a war (or just part of himself). When she heard the crack of the underbrush and felt him shiver at the sound-and-then-smell of Jensen she looked out toward the tree line. “Is that him?”

“Yeah,” Chris said.

Jensen came out of the woods like a wolf, walking when he could have been running and crossing the yard with curious sniffs at the air before he stopped in front of them. Christian and Milo and Aldis were sitting out on the grass in cheap shorts and T-shirts and they scratched at Jensen’s neck with their human fingernails when he was close enough. He licked at their hands and then picked himself up again and came up to sit next to Jared’s chair and put his head on the rickety arm rest to look at him with puppy-dog eyes.

Jared would have run a hand through his hair but he was sure (just _completely sure_ ) that if he touched him once he’d have to touch all of him. He nudged at Gen so she stood up and then climbed out of the chair and straightened his jeans. “I’m going…” He pointed back inside.

“To go fuck,” Chris finished for him, “put music on.”

Jensen turned to face him, head cocked to the side, ears forward and then jumped at the chair—made Sandy shriek—nails catching on the arm rest and Chris’ arm as he leaned in and licked at Chris’ frowning face. His tail wagged for a second and then he jumped down again. 

“Whatever, get lost,” Chris said and wiped the wolf spit off his face with his T-shirt.

\--

Jared made it to his room with Jensen following right behind him. He fumbled through finding a CD to put in the stereo—something loud—and managed to find the brain function to put it on endless repeat. His skin was itching so bad he wanted to scratch it off. He felt raw and magnetized like if he just gave in and let his body go it would attach itself to Jensen and never fucking let go. The smell of him—wet fur and dirt aside—was infusing itself through his pores and leaving him shivery-shaking with the _need_ of it.

When Jensen changed, stood in his room as human, the music was already so loud that talking wouldn’t have made any fucking sense so he didn’t even try. He turned around, back still pressed against the dresser by the wall, hands hanging at his side and looked at Jensen. He looked at the new scars on his skin—that awful one on his neck going pale but still bright enough to see—new ones on his arms, across his chest, around his slim hips. There was a scratch on his face, above his eyes and it looked angry and red and painful. 

Any other time—last year, maybe a few months ago when he rediscovered his anger—he would have held out. Maybe he would have made Jensen beg him for it, apologize for it, suffer for it but it had been too fucking long and all his better-or-worse intentions were worthless to him. He shoved himself away from the dresser and straight into Jensen.

\--

They fucked for hours without talking. He left bruises on Jensen and Jensen clawed at his skin with a raw desperation to get closer that damn near broke Jared’s fucking heart. They slept with the music beating the walls of his room bruised and broken and woke up to fuck again in the wallow of stink they were making out of his bed. 

\--

Later, he had no fucking idea when or what fucking time it was, his door kicked open and Chris came in, grabbed the cord on the stereo and yanked it out of the wall. “I take it back,” he said, “I’ll listen to you fuck as long as I don’t have to hear that fucking song one more time.” Then he left again and slammed the door behind him.

The silence he left was heavy and Jensen lifted his head from the pillow to look at the way he’d gone before looking at Jared and yawning himself back to laying out flat. His hand was tracing the lines of Jared’s skin and muscle with the idle satisfaction of ownership. 

“I’m sorry,” Jensen said.

All the things Jared was prepared to hear and to say—he hadn’t even considered that Jensen would chose to say those two words _first_. He didn’t know what to say to them or to the kiss against his shoulder.

\--

When he finally, _finally_ escaped from the bedroom he took a shower, went downstairs, raided the fridge for breakfast food and got punched in the face by Chris who came in from the back patio. The force of the punch knocked him against the fridge and left him kind of dizzy. He damn near landed on his ass except Chris caught him by the arm and held him still until the world stopped spinning and the sick bone-pain faded out enough he could _see_ again.

“What the fuck?” he asked.

“We’re okay now,” Chris told him. He nodded his head and watched Jared’s face until he was sure that he had his balance back then he let him go. 

“Yeah, great,” Jared said. Then, “ow.” He shook his head and the pain just sloshed around all diluted behind his cheekbones. “Want breakfast?”

“Of course I want breakfast,” Chris said. His grin was back and it seemed more honest now than it had before. 

\--

Jensen came down after he had a shower. He was wearing a pair of Jared’s shorts with a T-shirt stretched across his shoulders and he sniffed at the air before his stomach roared a noise that was loud enough even the girls (without supernaturally gifted hearing) turned around to look at him. 

“Oh yeah,” Gen said, “he’s going to have to get a job too. Did you hear his stomach? No way we can buy food and pay the rent.” She took another sip of her coffee and reached over to steal the paper back from Chris when he looked up while she was talking.

“Give it back,” Chris said and grabbed for it. “You don’t even read it.”

“I do so,” Gen countered.

“Sales bills do not count as reading,” Chris said. He snatched it back and scooted his chair over, moved his plate and cup with it. 

“There’s a seat for you,” Jared said. He kicked the extra chair out with his heel. Sandy lifted her head up from table to look at the commotion again and yawned mightily before dropping it down again. “After breakfast we’re going to go get a dog house for you.”

Gen snorted and Sandy giggled while Chris rolled his eyes behind his paper. Jensen cocked his head to the side and came closer, smelled clean now with the fingerprint bruises Jared had left all over his skin showing around the hems of his clothes. “Is that a joke?” Jensen asked.

“Yeah,” Jared said, “I wouldn’t waste money on a doghouse when I’ve got a couch you can sleep on. Sit down and eat.”

Jensen sat down and looked at the plate and fork already waiting for him. That same damn spot at the table had been waiting for him for months and now that he was there, they were finally a complete circle and it felt right at last. “Did Milo, Christian and Aldis leave?”

“They’re out running,” Chris said, “they said they’d come back to see you before they left.”

Jensen nodded and looked at the girls, then at Chris and back at him. “Thank you,” he said.

Jared smiled at him, “yeah. No problem.” Then he dropped a steak onto his plate and Chris shoved a coffee cup at him.

“Still,” Gen said, “a job—Chris, can you get him hired on with your guy? I mean, think about it—”

Under the table, Jensen’s knee was brushing up against his and Jared smiled. Nothing was perfect—far from it—but he finally felt like they had the time and balance to figure it out and make it work.


End file.
